KVT – Laughing at L’Espace

KVT plonks, replonks and re-replonks with enjoyment

The French have really lightened up the dour and drizzly weather of late with a couple of doses of welcome laughter.

Last week at a Cinemateque event, local expat, Lolo Lazar’s short film made me just about split my sides. And on Friday when I turned into the exhibition hall at L’Espace the same brand of humor took control of me again. This time thanks to the satirical wiles of Plonk et Replonk……and everything about Plonk and Replonk is totally delightful!

Every country, city, government, institution, individuals with delusions of grandeur, etc needs something or someone like the Plonks to take the hot air out of their sails and becalm them in reality for awhile.

The plonks are two brothers, Hubert and Jacques Froidevaux, from the Swisss city of La Chaux-de-Fonds near the French border which is famous for lots of things not the least being Le Corbusier, watch making, and a favorable mention by Karl Marx in ‘Das Kapital’. For a while now the brothers have been using old postcards and wryly changing them a bit so that they become hilariously funny commentaries….as the brothers say…a lick of Gary Larson’s ‘Far Side’ cartoon satire, a pinch of Pierre Desprogues black humor, and a generous dollop of Monty Python’s absurdist hilarity and if you look at the Plonk et Replonk website you’ll see its deliberate pythonesque similarities.

So if you are one of those lucky people who revel in satire and/or absurdity and who likes to laugh at their own foibles as well as those of their fellow citizens, you’ll be off to L’Espace before March 27 to catch a large collection of their postcards, absurdly funny signs and a couple of video presentations. And fans of the old and absurd can even buy copies at absurdly cheap prices. Click here for a preliminary chuckle….or a post-exhibition belly laugh…

The PR image for the Plonks ‘International Tuesday’ exhibition is enough to make any child (or parent of same) who has been beguiled by a demented or misguided art teacher to make object d’art/craft out of pasta shapes, laugh at the recollection.

I fondly remember my own kindergarten experience when we were set to paste farfalle, fagioloni, festonati, gigli, ragati onto empty bottles in a futile attempt to turn them into attractive Mother’s Day gifts. The best part was eating the dry bits(along with gobfulls of glue) when the teacher’s back was turned.

It’s hard to pick a favorite from the myriad images on display. The Moustach Epidemic was the first on to catch my eye

but that soon gave way to referential Dinner On The Water

then Veterinary Optician

then the Astronauts 1902

but the Excursion To Cake National Park got me chuckling

until I found the Cod Fishermen’s Siren

but Geranium Enrichment soon became an evironmental winner

until I saw the Hyperactive Class who were probably photographed just after a pasta pasting lesson

then it wasThe Third Stage of The Eifel Tower

though the Monument to Victims of Accidents was hard to beat

the Heads of State was just too true

and Holiday Freedom was a good place to exit

It’s one of those shows you won’t be sorry you spent a long time with. And if there are other wandering viewers you’ll enjoy their sudden explosions of laughter.

A final exit with two really nice Plonk et Replonk You Tube bits: