Robert Filliou 31

Davis Lisboa, Robert Filliou 31, 2023. Oil on linen, 80 × 80 × 3.5 cm (31.5 × 31.5 × 1.38 in).

The conceptual point of departure for this painting is a black-and-white photograph depicting Robert Filliou wearing on his head his seminal work Galerie légitime (1962), a portable exhibition device conceived as an alternative mode of artistic circulation. The image is situated within the context of the Festival of Misfits at Gallery One (London, 1962), a performative event rather than a conventional exhibition, in which Filliou activated this mobile gallery as part of a critique of institutional display models.

This historical moment was later reconfigured by the artist in The Frozen Exhibition (1972), a conceptual work that displaces the notion of exhibition into a temporal register. Within this framework, the term “Defrosting” does not refer to a specific event, but to a deferred activation of works initially presented in 1962, extending their existence beyond the immediacy of the performative context.

Executed in oil on linen, the painting translates this historically and conceptually stratified image into a contemporary pictorial structure. Through a dynamic interplay between figuration and abstraction, the composition situates itself within a critical genealogy that includes Boîte-en-valise by Marcel Duchamp and Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles by Marcel Broodthaers, positioning the artist-generated museum as both subject and operative framework of the work.