For his solo show at 40mcube, Samir Mougas presents new works produced for the occasion that stand as parts of a whole. Between hybridization and abstraction, the sculptures, installations and murals seem to derive from scientific representations and combine constantly regenerated lines, varieties, species and techniques.

The works of Samir Mougas take various forms that communicate with each other as stages of work: preparatory drawings, recovered photographs, murals, sculptures, installations that integrate all these media at the same time. These different elements are articulated as parts of a whole, each of them being able to function alone or accompanied by the others. By playing with this fragmentation, Samir Mougas creates a work that is both partial and exponential. He thus proposes a non-linear reading of his work that allows intrusion into his aesthetic and referential universe, while giving the spectator great freedom of appropriation. Also his works take strange forms which, between hybridization and abstraction, seem to derive from scientific representations.

For his solo show at 40mcube, Samir Mougas presents Strategy & Tactics, a sculpture composed of a geometric form embodying industrial manufacturing as a prototype, model or mould, as well as a variation of prolific modules made from various recycled materials. This work directly applies the principle explained by Michel de Certeau (1), the appropriation and misappropriation by the individual of forms or materials that were intended for a specific use by industry. This sculpture becomes in fact easily extensible, interpretable and adaptable to each space and each exhibition.

Samir Mougas is also creating a new sculpture in the form of a tuner horseshoe crab. This creature between scorpion and spider is here enlarged to the scale of a car. A tuning fin is transplanted to it. In the same sculpture, the artist confronts an organic form – a living fossil 500 million years old – and a contemporary practice of standardised customisation of mechanics. By intervening on an animal to which he adds mechanical forms, he reverses the process of tuning which consists in giving a threatening animal form to a mechanical device. He thus highlights a direct filiation between the animal and the war machine.
These two sculptures are presented in an environment of murals with screw motifs placed on supports between furniture and workbench. These worms constitute a perfect image of the work of Samir Mougas which provokes a crossbreeding of lineages, varieties, species and techniques constantly regenerated… in this exhibition with a Cronenbergian title.

(1) Michel de Certeau, L’Invention du quotidien, 1. Arts de faire, Paris : Gallimard, 1990.