Opening reception, Sunday, March 6, 7-9pm

Performance with Ben Boatright, Sunday, April 10, 7pm

From March 6 – April 10, 2011, PARTICIPANT INC is pleased to present the first New York solo exhibition of f.p. boué, infinite instant. Known for his time-based work, particularly in small gauge film, Boué incorporates the element of time into his manifold constructions of architectural experience in infinite instant. This site-specific installation includes sculptural elements, films, drawings and, as noted by Dan Sherer, essayist for a companion publication, “is motivated by a concern with the reciprocal translation between the two-dimensional representation of architecture and its three-dimensional reality….”

Boué’s focus on the intersection of art and architecture takes a variety of overlapping forms in which specific architectural shapes or engineering feats, both mundane and monumental, are deprived of their mass, volume, function and/or rendered at scales uncommon to the original. In this particular economy of representation, both the aesthetic domain and that of architecture undergo a transformation. This change finds its point of unstable equilibrium in Boué’s working methods, which separate buildings from their sites and reconstructs them as detached artifacts that simultaneously recall and negate their original characteristics.

In addition to structures scaled to the exhibition space itself, in particular under-utilized vertical space, Boué produces model-like constructs resembling known or obscure buildings in Switzerland and Northern Italy, rendered in common materials such as cardboard, cinderblocks, and homasote panels. “In simultaneous reference to two and three dimensions, his work assumes the role of analogue of any possible form of constructed space, thereby introducing forms unanchored to any specific medium. Boué thus creates a world of architectural semblances that capture the quality of the neutral as pure exteriority, realizing a built form that is all ‘outside’.” (Sherer, “infinite instant,” forthcoming 2011)

F.P. Boué was born in Marburg, Germany and studied linguistics, the history of art, architecture, and film in London and Paris. He lives and works in New York and has been exhibiting three-dimensional works involving architecture, landscape, and urban situations since 1981. His work has been exhibited at Galleria Luigi Deambrogi, Milan; Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris; Galerie Corinne Hummel, Basel; ARC, Paris; and Markus Winter, Berlin. He began showing films in 1999. His films have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Kunstmuseum, Bern; Künstlerhaus, Stuttgart; the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; New Museum, New York; and Tate Modern, London, among others.