David Campany – a Handful of Dust – first edition (signed)

MACK 2015

 Handful of Dust is David Campany’s speculative history of the last century, and a visual journey through some of its unlikeliest imagery. Let’s suppose the modern era begins in October of 1922. A little French avant-garde journal publishes a photograph of a sheet of glass covered in dust. The photographer is Man Ray, the glass is by Marcel Duchamp. At first they call it a view from an aeroplane. Then they call it Dust Breeding. It’s abstract, it’s realist. It’s an artwork, it’s a document. It’s revolting and compelling. Cameras must be kept away from dust but they find it highly photogenic. The connections in a Handful of Dust  range far and wide, from aerial reconnaisance and the American dustbowl to Mussolini’s final car journey and the wars in Iraq. a Handful of Dust accompanied an exhibition of the same name, curated by David Campany for Le Bal, Paris (October 2015- January 2016), with works by Man Ray, John Divola, Sophie Ristelhueber, Mona Kuhn, Xavier Ribas, Nick Waplington and many others, alongside anonymous press photos, postcards, magazine spreads and movies.