How to turn a simple tennis ball into the best burlesque actor? The British duo John Wood and Paul Harrison have found a thousand recipes to achieve this goal: they are presenting them all summer at the Musée d'art contemporain de Rochechouart, in the heart of Limousin, for their first retrospective in France. In France, we know very little about these masters of English nonsense . But their native country has celebrated them through numerous exhibitions. A sort of Gilbert and George in a straight and intellectual version, the two artists have been working together since 1993: heirs to both Buster Keaton, the silent film actor, and to the pioneers of performance, such as the Americans Bruce Nauman and Vito Acconci.
If they make sculptures or posters, it is essentially in video that they excel. Absurd, edited with a sense of Méliès-style bricolage, their sketches follow one another, short and scathing. At the time of their first works, Wood and Harrison took themselves as guinea pigs, subjects prey to the laws of gravity as well as metaphysics. But, in the short films staged more recently, they make everyday objects their mistreated heroes.
