Georges Rousse
dal 9/4/2008 al 23/5/2008
Segnalato da
9/4/2008
Georges Rousse
Galerie RX, Paris
Tour d'un monde. In abandoned buildings across the world, before their destruction or their renovation, the artist has worked and installed his darkroom for more than 20 years. He has set up his nomad workshop in places into which he has infused new life and given it a new history.
"Georges Rousse in situ" by Dominique Roussel
In abandoned buildings across the world, before their destruction or their
renovation, Georges Rousse has worked and installed his darkroom for more than 20
years. He has set up his nomad workshop in places into which he has infused new life
and given it a new history. As the artist himself likes to say, "...I call upon
various methods of art : I am the designer of the project, the painter on-site, the
architect by my interpretation of a given space and by the construction I organise
there within, and finally the photographer who coordinates all these actions"
Alone in these places destined to be lost into oblivion, he has chosen photography
as the artistic medium to put together an artwork, visible in its assembled state
through his camera lens at a fixed point. Early in his career, he painted figurative
human shapes projected from his dreams. Later, his work evolved towards the
transformation of places by drawing, painting, light manipulation, construction and
deconstruction. New spaces were then created by the effects of perspective,
anamorphosis, and optical illusion. With his photography, going from a
three-dimensional space to a two-dimensional image disturbs one's visual perception
and embarks the mind on a voyage into the unreal, quite similar to what a painting
does. The complex relations between architecture, photography and painting are all
revealed in the calm and contemplative atmosphere of his sereine photographs.
"On the road with Georges Rousse" by Philippe Piguet
Since he has entered the artistic scene 25 years ago, Georges Rousse has not ceased
to travel around the world in the way a fictitious character would stride across the
globe over plains, valleys and mountains as one would think to cross a street. This
is someone who from one day to the next finds himself at the other side of the
planet and never leaving us a clue about his whereabouts. In brief, he has made this
world his own and never stops to circle it in search of who knows what treasure.
However, this man is not a hero from a legend, he is an artist and photography is
his artistic medium. Rousse's method quickly differentiates itself from the simple
click-click photography of his predecessors and readily qualifies as being
"artistic", followed by a rather well-researched fabrication process. [...]
For the past 25 years Georges Rousse has produced, as one would suspect, a
considerable number of pictures and his work has existed in all different types of
composition. From a figurative style to a clear geometric abstraction, from the use
of certain patterns such as words, textual excerpts, details from topographical
maps, reproductions of buildings, etc., his art reveals a tension between diverse
antagonistic qualities. He employs both the distinct and the indistinct, the known
and the indescribable, the opaque and the transparent, the physical and the
metaphysical, shadows and light, and finally order and chaos. There is something
about the technique of Georges Rousse that simultaneously disorientates and
fascinates the viewer. It is something that has a lasting impact because it instills
a sense of doubt within us. [...] Always in pursuit of what the future holds, he is
an open invitation to perpetually question oneself and to seek for the eternally
unattainable.
Original title of text : "Georges Rousse, portrait en chemin".
Image: Bratislava 2, 1992. Cibachrome
Opening on the 10th of April
Galerie RX
6 avenue Delcasse', Paris 8e
tues - sat 12 midday - 7 pm
free admission