Robert Filliou 25 (404 ERROR)
This oil painting on linen is inspired by a 1962 photograph in which Robert Filliou appears wearing his Galerie légitime, conceived as a folded paper hat, during an exhibition in London. The composition of commas derives from Marcel Broodthaers’s thermoformed plaque Cinéma Modèle, a work that interrogates the relationship between written language and industrial process. The painting forms part of The Paintings Section from Davis Museum Barcelona, the only section of the museum in which works are offered for sale. Davis Museum Barcelona thus inscribes itself within the genealogy of artists who have conceived the museum as a conceptual gesture, from Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise to Filliou’s Galerie légitime and Broodthaers’s Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles.
The James Norton Collection, Blue Ridge, Georgia, USA.
Original · Signed · Certificate
€1,750
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Product Details
Davis Lisboa, Robert Filliou 25 (404 ERROR), 2022. Oil on canvas, 80 × 80 × 3.5 cm (31.50 × 31.50 × 1.38 in)
Robert Filliou 25 (404 ERROR) forms part of an ongoing reflection on the museum conceived by the artist. The work takes as its point of departure a black-and-white photograph of Robert Filliou, taken during Defrosting the Frozen Exhibition at the Misfits Festival in London in 1962. In it, Filliou balances his Galerie légitime on his head—a folded paper hat transformed into a portable exhibition space. At once playful and exacting, the gesture displaces the conventional idea of the museum, bringing it closer to the everyday, the mobile, and the participatory.
Lisboa reactivates this historical reference through a restrained yet conceptually attuned pictorial language. The painting extends Filliou’s implicit critique of the institution without reducing it to illustration, translating that tension into a visual structure in which image and idea remain in careful balance. More than a citation, the work operates as a rigorous contemporary reactivation of a radical artistic position.
The presence of commas within the composition introduces a dialogue with Marcel Broodthaers, particularly with Cinéma Modèle, from his Poésie industrielle series. There, punctuation marks were transformed into images through industrial processes and ordinary materials. Here, that logic is absorbed into painting as a visual system in which language, surface, and historical memory become intertwined.
The work belongs to The Paintings Section from Davis Museum Barcelona, a project that continues the lineage of artists who imagined the museum as an artistic form. In resonance with Duchamp, Filliou, and Broodthaers—from Boîte-en-valise to Galerie légitime and Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles—the painting situates collection, display, and institutional structure within a single conceptual field, understood here as inseparable from the work itself.
The James Norton Collection, Blue Ridge, Georgia, USA.
Additional information
| Weight | 5.2 kg |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 80 × 80 × 3.5 cm |
