calendario eventi  :: 

X

29/1/2013

Laurence Demaison

Galerie Esther Woerdehoff, Paris

Since the 1990s, Laurence Demaison's photographs have gone above and beyond the nature of self-portrait to offer a profoundly original vision and a body of work which has been diverse and extremely consistent at the same time.
If the self representation remains for many artists a mirror which sublimes their authors, the distortions the photographer did to her body and her face rather refer to the creation of an alterity that would escape from her true image. The surrealism of the images and the titles given to the artist's series remind us with humor that everything has been invented.

Body representation has been the origin of a long experimentation during which the artist has been taking advantage of the technical possibilities offered by analog photography while playing with time exposures, blur effects, contrast or directly on the negatives in order to create fascinating and singular images.

"The use of my hated carcass would have been inconceivable if I had not felt so much discomfort by the mere presence of models who participated to my first photographs. Too bad, because it would have been easier to project my desires on bodies that I found very beautiful ; I must say it was not such a bad thing as it might have been too obvious and too comfortable. Between the horror of my own flesh and the stare of others, I chose the more manageable. This alternative forced me to venture into a deep research whose only solution was to disappear, or at least become something else - but it is in fact the same."

As in her previous series, the photographs of "Sous vide" ("In vacuum") are all self-portraits. With her head wrapped in a plastic bag during a sitting session close to a real performance, Laurence Demaison has paradoxically disappeared and transformed her face into a true mask of death, sculptured with violence but also softened by the aesthetics of photography, the subtle shades of grays, of blacks and highlights.

Since 2010, Laurence Demaison has moved away from self-portraits and started to use mannequins. This anonymous and inert figure has allowed her to cross the mirror and to also understand the photographing process on the other side of the lens. In her most recent series, "Noires Soeurs" (Black Sisters), the artist hides her alter ego behind a veil, like a forgotten statue, as austere as Justice or weeping as medieval mourners on a grave. The different types of fabrics used to cover the woman sitting have succeeded in creating fascinating effects of darkness and light. This concealed emotion strikes the viewer by its graphic presence and gives itself freely to the interpretation of the viewer.

The series "Si j'avais su" ("If I had known") and its very dark sense humor confront us to our strongest fears. The photographer creates a morbid game with babies, using reborn dolls of a frightening realism. She stages their suicides by any imaginable ways from drowning in a jar, defenestration, burning to a slow death, while referring to certain postures from her previous photographic series. This series of twelve images is presented in handmade, one-of-a-kind box, a unique piece created by an artist who in recent years has also been expressing herself through drawing and sculpture.

Image: Si j'avais su n° 2, 2010 © Laurence Demaison, Courtesy Galerie Esther Woerdehoff

Artist reception: Wednesday 30 January 6-9pm

Galerie Esther Woerdehoff
36 rue Falguière 75015 Paris
Hours: Tue - Sat 2-6pm

stampa

permanent link