In the framework of Berlin-Paris, Aurélien Froment conceives the exhibition as a series of landscapes inspired by the popular success of the kindergarten of Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852), founder of a pedagogy based on game. 

In the video room, Aurélien Froment presents The second gift, a single 7 minutes long video shot of Friedrich Froebel’s second gift, an educational object, filmed in a white studio and very slowly rotating on itself. The installation includes three interviews which the artist realised in 2010 during a seminar dedicated to the German pedagogue who codified twelve gifts also called objects that, through a child’s active focus, give birth to a progressive process of knowledge of the world via its shapes. The film looks at ways of tracing an object, from what it is made to how it is made, from what it refers in the history of forms to what it allows to project. 

Then in the project room, the artist completely covers the walls of wallpaper (in a gradation from white to dark green to black) which is a decorative transcription of the video installation The second gift. With its iconographic narration, its rhythm, this wallpaper synthesises in a sole sequence of pictures the subject of the film and the evolution of pedagogic objects designed by Froebel.  Just like those games designed to make the kids understand how the world ‘works’, to allow them to explore it and to get to know its laws, Aurélien Froment’s exhibition functions similarly to a progressive comprehension exercise.

Born in 1976 in Angers in France, Aurélien Froment lives and works in Dublin. He has had exhibitions in various public institutions as well as private galleries. Among his most recent monographic exhibitions : Aurélien Froment: Fickteater, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2009); Froebel Suite, Gasworks, London (2009); The Fourth Wall, Centro Cultural Montehermoso, Vitoria-Gasteiz (2009); Aurélien Froment, Théâtre de Poche, Stuk Kunstcentrum, Leuven (2008); Acknowledgement, Motive Gallery, Amsterdam (2008). Among his most recent collective exhibitions : 8th Gwangju Biennale, 10,000 Lives, Gwangju (2010); 2 1/2 Dimensional, Film Featuring Architecture, deSingel, Antwerpen (2010); FAX, Para/Site Art Space, Hong Kong, SAR (2010); FAX, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA (2010); Video Art: Replay, Part 2. Everyday Imaginar, ICA – Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (2010); Performa 09, Performa, New York, NY (2009); Galerie Chez Valentin, Paris (2009); The Space of Words, MUDAM – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxemburg (2009); Word Event, Gruppenausstellung, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2008).