The two American artists behind the name "FAILE", Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller, find inspiration in the visual universe of their childhood. A universe teeming with references to Hollywood, Spaghetti Westerns, 1980s comics or children's stories. Their work also points recurringly to advertising imagery and landmark events in recent American history.
In this vast iconography, the two artists cut out fragments, transform them, combine them in a thousand different ways. As in a lego construction game, images, text and patterns are boldly rearranged and recomposed, bringing about temporal and contextual collisions. An approach reminiscent of the art of collage, a major component of their style, claim the artists.
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"I think it’s also very much about a process and trying things, taking risks. Growing from the projects we do, even our process in making is a little bit of a journey and there’s some serendipity put into the way we make prints and paintings. You kind of push it so far and pull it back, it’s about pushing that line a little bit. Destroying to create."
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The duo often brings back into play elements of their past works. Patterns, sentences, characters keep on reappearing, sometimes in the foreground, sometimes in the background of their creations. Taking a step back to embrace the work of FAILE in its totality feels like being faced with a great symphonic fresco where the same themes keep coming up over and over in endless variations. "The idea that the elements fit together to form a whole that we don't necessarily perceive at the outset is there in everything we do," say the artists.
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FaileBirdy in Paris, 2020Acrylic and spray paint on canvas153 x 122 cm
60 1/4 x 48 1/8 inView more details -
FaileLiberté Unité, 2020Acrylic and spray paint on canvas153 x 122 cm
60 1/4 x 48 1/8 inView more details -
FaileLittle Fluffy Clouds, 2020Acrylic and spray paint on canvas153 x 122 cm
60 1/4 x 48 1/8 inView more details -
FaileModern Fiction, 2020Acrylic and spray paint on canvas153 x 122 cm
60 1/4 x 48 1/8 inView more details
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FaileParadise, 2020Acrylic and spray paint on canvas153 x 122 cm
60 1/4 x 48 1/8 inView more details -
FaileThe Pionneers, 2020Acrylic and spray paint on canvas153 x 122 cm
60 1/4 x 48 1/8 inView more details -
FaileThe Place You'll Go, 2020Acrylic and spray paint on canvas153 x 122 cm
60 1/4 x 48 1/8 inView more details -
FaileUnder a Constellation, 2019Acrylic and silkscreen ink on wood blocks, steel frame96 x 60 x 6 cm
37 3/4 x 23 5/8 x 2 3/8 inView more details
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FaileSilent Partner, 2019Acrylic and silkscreen ink on wood blocks, steel frame72.5 x 102 x 7.5 cm
28 1/2 x 40 1/8 x 3 inView more details -
FaileHollywood Nights, 2019Acrylic and silkscreen ink on wood blocks, steel frame106 x 71 x 6 cm
41 3/4 x 28 x 2 3/8 inView more details -
FaileFantaisie, 2020Acrylic and spray paint on canvas153 x 122 cm
60 1/4 x 48 1/8 inView more details -
FaileDu Chaos de la Classe, 2020Acrylic and spray paint on canvas153 x 122 cm
60 1/4 x 48 1/8 inView more details
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STUDIO INSPIRATIONS
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[Making of] FAILE at the Modern and Contemporary Art Museum in Strasbourg
Location: Strasbourg Modern and Contemporary Art Museum, France
Production: MAMCS & Danysz gallery
Dimensions: 3 x 100 m (10 x 328 feet)
Context: For its 20 years the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg invited the American duo FAILE to produce a monumental unprecedented commision work. FAILE imagined a monumental composition that takes its sources in their encounter with the city. In December 2017, Miller and McNeil discover Strasbourg and its heritage for the first time. In the history and the legends that forge the identity of the city ? one that is completely unknown to them - they found a special inspiration. Back to Brooklyn, they took back the images and memories that marked their stay to write a poem that serves as a frame for their project. Entitled "From The Air We Share", this poem, dominated by metaphors and symbols, is the frame for an epic narrative filled with figures related to the history and culture of Strasbourg, from Marie Antoinette to Hans Arp, from the presence of the Rhine to that of the devil who haunts the cathedral.
FROM THE AIR WE SHARE
Born on currents
carried from secret seas
They want me inside out
We journey in worlds reflected
— a million universes swirl
Crossing borderless centuries
The river shines from fallen rays out of sight
One becomes many where timbers glow
Painted landscapes deceive me — dancing between angels and angles
On rooftops, out of reach, I listen to the whispers of the city — wanted by the devil’s whirling winds
Time is measured here under a constellation
of gold
Hourglasses fall in a pageantry of death
The darkness is cut with a rose stained light
I’m just your satellite
Stars and stones
— fireworks and cyclones
We hope we’ll never break — hearts racing —
it’s almost over now
Words are lost
The sun fades
Our future is unwritten -
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