Valerie Belin
dal 10/12/2004 al 19/2/2005
Segnalato da
10/12/2004
Valerie Belin
Galerie Xippas, Paris
The artist will present two new series of photographs. The series Masks is composed of 'portraits' in which object is immediately presented with its function as an illusory and grotesque disguise, but the face that disengages itself from it also reaches a certain level of plausibility. Corroborating her interest in the trivial, she photographed bags of potato chips, purchased in different supermarkets throughout England. In this new series, the artist reveals abstraction's bet against an unanticipated modification in the subject.
In her fourth solo exhibition at Galerie Xippas, Valérie Belin will present two new series of photographs: Masks and Chips.
The series Masks , similar to her previous series Mannequins and Doubles, is composed of “portraits.†However, differing from the preceding ones, in which one observed reality in order to notice the fallacious, the masks – photographs done in the “realist†style – do not make illusions. The object is immediately presented with its function as an illusory and grotesque disguise, but the face that disengages itself from it also reaches a certain level of plausibility. One could say, perhaps, that the grotesque becomes reality.
Corroborating her interest in the “trivial,†Valérie Belin photographed bags of potato chips, purchased in different supermarkets throughout England. In this new series, the artist reveals abstraction’s bet against an unanticipated modification in the subject. The photographs are presented as strict “equivalents†of the photographed object. The paradox thus rests in the transformation of the subject through the work’s minimal protocol: enlargement and suppression of color. The tautology of the artist’s technique and the negation of the subject that she introduces allow these photographs to act much like the monochrome in painting; the only difference is that here, what remains in the “depth†of the subject is not color, but a motif.
Manifest in these two new bodies of work is the artist’s consistent concentration on objects “without quality,†or, more precisely, without import - at times almost kitsch - but susceptible to the conversion of presence into illusion and illusion into presence. Thus, the masks become vacant faces, and the chip bags, in their extravagant decor, become bodies emptied of life. This evocative power, which seems to exceed the limits of the subject in an image, is launched in Valérie Belin’s work from a minimal “process†which adheres perfectly to the logic of her medium; the fixation of reflected light on a susceptible surface transforms the image into a specter.
Valérie Belin was born in 1964; she lives and works in Paris. Since her first solo exhibition at Galerie Xippas in 1998, she has shown regularly in France and abroad: She is represented by Brent Sikkema in New York and Galerie Ulrich Fiedler in Cologne (Germany); Galerie Patrick De Brock in Knokke (Belgium) granted her a solo exhibition in 2002; Koldo Mitxelena Kulturunea de San Sebastián exhibited a retrospective of her work since 1997 in 2003, as did Dornus Artium 2002 de Salamanque in 2004. The Musée de l’Elysée à Lausanne (Switzerland) and la Maison européenne de la Photographie each granted her a solo exhibition for 2006.
The photographed masks are from “César,†an enterprise created in the 19th century by an artisan couple that fabricated quills from bird feathers. The business was converted in 1842 to manufacture masks embellished with feathers. In 1905, one of the Césars - whose parents were lacking neither in humor nor in anticipated ambition for their son in naming him “Jules†- left the family business to resume the fabrication of masks in Saumur. He called the new enterprise after his family name. Multiple generations of the César family continued to head the company.
Galerie Xippas
108 rue Vieille du Temple 75003 Paris - France