PLONK ET REPLONK Au Facteur idéal la patrie reconnaissante
PLONK ET REPLONK
The Plonk & Replonk collective is made up of two brothers, Jacques and Hubert Froideveaux, born in 1963 and 1966 in Noirmont (Switzerland), and Miguel-Ange Morales, born in 1963 in Barcelona (Spain). They created this burlesque collective in 1995. Ironic and mocking, they mainly divert postcards from the Belle Epoque using the photomontage technique. Integrating personal photographs, adding colour or simply adding unusual captions, they produce absurd and unusual worlds. Some of them were published in the daily newspaper Le Temps and the monthly Fluide glacial.
In 1998, they exhibited for the first time at the Fondation l’Estrée in Ropraz for the Façon-façon exhibition. Since then, their work has been shown in some fifty exhibitions, including the Musée de l’Absurde in Bienne for the exhibition Bienne, moustaches et céramique in 2015, and more recently the exhibition L’univers à l’envers at the Musée des Confluences in Lyon in 2019. The Hôtel-Dieu museum in Porrentruy has also had a permanent exhibition of their work since 2017.
Au Facteur idéal la patrie reconnaissante
Au Facteur Idéal la patrie reconnaissante, from the Ideal Palace collection, is a photomontage. A horse’s head, with a white spot and wearing a halter, is personified in a photographic oval. Dressed in a postman’s uniform, a kepi covers his ears and a medal is placed on his bust. Although distorted by the addition of this equine figure, the image is reminiscent of a well-known photograph of Postman Cheval taken in 1905. Here, the artists play on words to transform the postman into a nag, but although absurd, the work remains a tribute. Underneath the portrait is written: “TO THE IDEAL POSTMAN, THE RECOGNISING HOMELAND”, a phrase generally quoted to salute the merits of great men. It is also possible to read an equivalent of this formula below the pediment of the Pantheon since 1837 and that Ferdinand Cheval uses on the Palais idéal: “To great men, the grateful homeland”.