By MATTHEW EVANS

Claire Fontaine deals with the messier side of things. The Paris-based collective, which refers to itself in the third person feminine, is named after the venerable French stationary company whose school notebooks rest under the anxious pens of most young French scholastics. Although at times mischievous, she is far from childish and, instead of a blank page, offers an exuberant spate of images and text that leaves little room for our own pens to jot down anything remotely clear. But this is all tied into Claire Fontaine’s practice and concept; she decries “the impossibility of marching together while shouting out phrases so that they can be heard, the incapacity to engage in indirect and representative actions.” So if Dexter Sinister is the attractive and pedagogical curator for visual and literary culture, finely detailing its ever-growing Wunderkammer, then Claire Fontaine is its indecipherable, blustering herald and craftswoman. However, despite her work’s unkempt and volatile content, there is something matter-of-fact about the way it’s presented, making for interesting exhibition chemistry.

Her show “Change” opened at Galerie Neu this summer, and filled the space with culture-jamming ready-mades and détournement that delivered a contemporary feel to the often-outdated concept. The Passe-Partout series is a set of key chains dangling with lock picks, expanding on the previous piece 371 Grand (2005), which consisted in copied keys to the Reena Spaulings Gallery in New York, encouraging the dissipation of private property and closed doors, particularly in the art market. At a time when people must negotiate between legitimate concerns about the merging of art and commerce, and the fashionable tendency to dismiss such apprehensions as trite and naïve, Passe-Partout feels appropriate. Another elfish piece, Change, showed a handful of American quarters rigged with small blades in a vitrine. But the power of the show came from the main installation, which surpassed mere subversive craft. My collar is clean, my underwear too … is a massive pile of prints reproducing an excerpt from a Rilke statement. The form of the piece seems hygienic enough, but the statement is far from clean as it illustrates the fragility of security and the modern notion of progress. Mutltitude, a zigzagging partition laden with corporate and cultural patches, cuts across the middle of the space and bombards you with content without meaning, or what Claire Fontaine may call “black bloc” in reference to the boutique at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, or even “the crisis of singularities,” imputed from the loss of stable identities. Another Black Bloc reference is the haunting flag installation that covers nearly half the gallery. The six, dark banners illustrate the blind and opaque nationalism that continues to trouble contemporary society, and the bright blue agricultural tools that crown the flags reflect the collective’s preoccupation with proletariat alienation.

Nevertheless, there is something old-fashioned about pseudo-Marxist détournement in the 21st century, something a bit shoddy in our hyper-design times. But Claire Fontaine is more than aware of the uselessness of nostalgic utopianism, and merely offers up a sincere reminder that some things haven’t changed. She does so in a way, however, that’s up-to-date, even marketable. If understanding the work often proves difficult, then at least visually recognizing it is effortless, if not pedestrian. The pieces are so clean and appropriate for contemporary apparel or design that I wouldn’t be surprised to see a guy wearing customized lock picks around his neck, trying hard to keep them from occasionally dipping into the yokes of his eggs Benedict.