Published on the occasion of the exhibition "Incarnations, corps à corps avec les collections du MAC Lyon" at the Royal Monastery of Brou, this book is the artist's first monograph. It accompanies the entry of his work into the Brou Museum's collection.
Dylan Caruso's practice explores the conditions under which secretions—blood, semen, milk—become visible, presenting them in dried or inert forms. Through a minimalist aesthetic, a radical economy of means and a restrained abstraction, he offers a critique of strategies of domination and blurs the boundaries between the aseptic and the organic, the intimate and the political, high culture and counterculture.
Titled η (êta)—the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, associated with fluids and their transformation—this book looks back on a selection of works representative of the artist's last ten years of research and creation, accompanied by contributions from three authors. Juliette Belleret, exhibition curator and art critic, offers a sensitive exploration of the artist's ornamental works, which she gathers within a mental space. Fabienne Dumont, art historian specializing in feminist and queer issues, situates the artist's practice within the long history of the dissociation between masculinity and dominant power. Finally, Magali Briat-Philippe, art historian and curator, reveals the multiple symbolic dialogues woven between the works acquired by the Museum of the Royal Monastery of Brou and the history of its founder. All three provide unique perspectives on the social, historical, and cultural issues that drive the artist's practice.
Dylan Caruso (born 1994, lives and works in Saint-Étienne) is an artist-researcher in the Department of Visual Arts at Jean Monnet University in Saint-Étienne. He is also an art critic and exhibition curator.
