Detanico/Lain

Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain have worked together for about twenty years. They quickly established themselves on the international artistic scene thanks to a subtle reflection carried out on the modes of conventional representation that surround us. Fascinated by what goes beyond man and the understanding of the world, Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain draw from scientific, mathematical and literary research systems of representation and writing of time, space and the infinite. Inherited from the conceptual statement and anchored in the use of new means of sound, graphic and plastic creation, their approach is expressed in a rigorous and refined formalism of great poetry. Respectively linguist - semiologist and graphic designer by training, the artists together reflect on the use of graphic signs in society. They are particularly interested in the notion and notation of time and the forms it can take and thus create new typographies by replacing letters with traditional alphabets, forms from everyday life. These forms are then staged in exhibition spaces giving this writing an unprecedented materiality. Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain thus pursue a reflection on the role of language and its symbolic and physical place in our societies. Language thus reveals its dual function, a communication tool but also an instrument of reading and a reflection of different cultures. Oscillating between rudimentary technique and cutting-edge technology, their pieces take forms as diverse as letter, word, still image, animation, sound and installation. Whether it is alphabets, cartographies or calendars, they attack the very foundations of these codes that govern our daily lives, convinced of the intersection between sign and meaning. The visions they propose are most of the time codified, fragmentary or transitory. Born in 1974 and 1973 respectively in Brazil, they live and work in Paris.