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Open in the appOn the occasion of Nuit des Bains, Artpsy and David Ancelin are pleased to invite you to the opening of the SMOG exhibition. For around fifteen years, David Ancelin has been developing with Smog a series of works in which fragments of the ordinary world seem to have lost their… On the occasion of Nuit des Bains, Artpsy and David Ancelin are pleased to invite you to the opening of the SMOG exhibition. For around fifteen years, David Ancelin has been developing with Smog a series of works in which fragments of the ordinary world seem to have lost their bearings. Landscapes recede, distances become uncertain and objects, stripped of their environment, acquire a strange presence. These images take form on stainless steel plates through screen printing, before a final intervention with polish. Usually intended to make the metal shine until it takes on the appearance of a mirror, the product is here deliberately left on the surface. The artist interrupts the polishing before its completion, preserving this matter as a pictorial component in its own right. The result escapes the usual fixity of the image. Depending on the light and the spectator's position, the surfaces transform, certain details appear while others fade. Fog is no longer merely a represented motif: it becomes a property of the work itself. The subjects of Smog belong to a familiar world. Tourist amenities, ordinary architectures, natural elements and public facilities make up a discrete inventory of our environment. Isolated within vast grey expanses, they suddenly seem devoid of function, scale or destination. The artist does not seek to narrate their disappearance. He is rather interested in what remains when context fades: a silhouette, a structure, a reflection, sometimes almost nothing. This economy of means gives the works their particular tension. Between the precision of screen-printed motifs and the indeterminacy of surfaces, the gaze constantly hesitates between recognition and doubt. If the title Smog evokes fog laden with pollution, the series is not limited to an environmental reading. It…