The world’s largest photography fair will take place at the Grand Palais Ephémère until November 12, 2023. The most famous galleries compete for daring, publishing rare pieces or current creations and also presenting emerging artists…
ORLAN, look for the woman
We knew about hybridization in biology. At the stand of the Barcelona gallery RocioSantaCruz, the Saint-Etienne artist ORLAN has just “met” with famous women who inspire him. Here she is “crossed” with Agnès Varda, Joséphine Baker, Marie Curie, Olympe de Gouges, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun and Amelia Earhart. And even Empress Eugénie, a founding image of the series that we saw during the Chère Eugénie exhibition. The artist then reworked the iconic bee bottle from Maison Guerlain. RM
ORLAN hybridizes with Agnès Varda and continues his path. © STUDIO ORLAN, courtesy of RocioSantaCruz
Constance Nouvel, she admires herself
It looks like a stone falling from the marble rocks that Ernst Jünger loved. But if you look closely, the block is a small piece of chalk that Ruinart used to “candle the bottles,” that is, to display an informational statement. With this gesture of a chalk pit professional, Constance Nouvel, winner of the Champagne House’s photography prize, changed her perspective to evoke both a territory and a know-how. His compositions result in almost abstract works. But without intellectual gravity. When the experiment has the lightness of a bubble…. We can find this artist until December 22, 2023 on the occasion of her exhibition “Jour Double” at the In Situ-Fabienne Leclerc gallery in Romainville. RM www.insituparis.fr
Mirées (chalk) (2023), by Constance Nouvel. © Constance Nouvel, with kind permission of Galerie In Situ – Fabienne Leclerc / ADAGP, Paris 2023
Andres Seranno, prophetic
Moses, Yellow and Red is a technically ecumenical work. The New York artist from the gallery Nathalie Obadia uses, among other things, acrylic, oil pastel and photo paper. We see the face of Michelangelo’s Moses, a statue made between 1513 and 1515 for the tomb of Julius II. With his intervention, Andres Serrano wants to highlight the almost physical strength of the Prophet. Sigmund Freud said that this sculpture in the Basilica of St. Peter in Bonds in Rome showed a superman willing to “defeat his own passion in the name of a mission to which he is committed.” RM
Moses, yellow and red(2023), by Andres Serrano. © Andres Serrano, Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris / Brussels / Photo: Aurélien Mole
Ilona Langbroek, Shadow of the Past
How can we not see in Dutch artist Ilona Langbroek’s Silent Loss series a nod to the intimate and feminine universe of Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi? The same strangeness, the same feeling of loneliness. But behind the photographer’s melancholic images from the picture gallery lie painful family stories of exile, colonialism and uprooting. His grandparents lived in the former Dutch East Indies… RM
Lead (2023), by Ilona Langbroek. © Ilona Langbroek
Nhu Xuan Hua, sad tropism
From photographs of her Vietnamese family from the 1950s to her exile in France, this young photographer, born in 1989, seeks to put back together the pieces of a shattered history, play with the “errors of memory” and speak about all the “displaced people of the world “. His characters have become terribly present ghosts. Like here the picture entitled “Les Oubliées”, two of his aunts sunbathing, from the series “Tropism: Consequences of Displaced Memory”. This promising artist has just joined the young gallery Anne-Laure Buffard, which will open its new exhibition space on December 7th at 6 rue Chapon in the third arrondissement of Paris. A duo exhibition is planned around Pierre-Elie de Pibrac (photographer currently present at the Guimet Museum) and Yoshimi Futamura. RM www.annelaurebuffard.com
The forgotten – Archives from ’70, 2016-2021, by Nhu Xuan Hua. © Nhu Xuan Hua, Courtesy of Galerie Anne-Laure Buffard
Shadi Ghadirian
An Edward Hopper atmosphere. Of a diffuse and quiet sadness. The idea of Shadi Ghadirian, an artist born in Iran in 1974 and one of the most emblematic figures in his country’s art scene. This intimate composition comes from the series “Seven Stones”, presented by the Silk Road gallery in Tehran, and surprises with the incongruous presence of a meteorite that crashed into a woman’s bedroom. What symbolism should we see there? It’s up to you to imagine… RM
Seven stones by Shadi Ghadirian. © Shadi Ghadirian, courtesy of Silk Road Gallery and the artist
Vincent Munier, look for the little beast…
Although not that small. The photographer traversed the steep reliefs of Tibet in search of the extremely rare snow leopard, an animal with an almost mythological reputation. What a joy to lose yourself in the details of these sublime images presented by the Flatland Gallery, where the cat hides, whose fur allows it to camouflage itself in both the countless minerals and the lichen plateaus. His adventures, captured in pictures with Marie Amiguet and in the presence of Sylvain Tesson, were the subject of a wonderful documentary, The Snow Panther, which won a César in 2022. Watch for the publication of his first monograph this month in Kobalann Editions. 384 pages for an unforgettable journey to the edge of the wild world. E.C
Where is the panther? (Tibet), (2017), by Vincent Munier. © Vincent Munier
Roe Ethridge, with a picture
Roe Ethridge is both a commercial photography prodigy and author of a wealth of artistic works. He likes to distract the former in order to feed the latter. As part of the Still Life Stilled selection at the Gagosian gallery booth, he presents this “Oslo Grace at Willets Points” from 2019. An ironic image in which the pink-clad model repeats on the wet ground at the foot of Citi Field smiles at the legendary stadium of the New York Mets. A composition full of contrasts in which the conspicuousness of communication codes merges with the dim light of a setting sun. E.C
Oslo Grace at Willets Point (2019), by Roe Ethridge. © Roe Ethridge, courtesy of artist Roe Ethridge and Gagosian
Wim Wenders, Texas in Paris
Six images presented in the Howard Greenberg Gallery take a journey to the America we dream of, including this rusty motel. Set between the Downton district of Los Angeles, California and the city of Odessa, Texas, these fragments of urban landscapes – gas stations, closed shops, shadows cast on sleeping walls – date from 1983, when Wim Wenders was busy creating his Masterpiece, Paris, Texas, worn by Harry Dean Stanton and Nastassja Kinski. Only they are missing in these abandoned pictures… E.C
Old Trapper’s, San Fernando, California, (1983), by Wim Wenders. © Wim Wenders/ Wenders Images and Howard Greenberg Gallery
Pauline Fargue, window on the body
The famous Roches Noires building in Trouville, long haunted by Marguerite Duras, has a very strange fate. The facade appears to have been cut out for a tomography, offering a cross-section that reveals the stone on one side and the windows and reflections of the water on the other. As a photographer, but also a performer, videographer and sculptor, Pauline Fargue never tires of tinkering with these images, which she brings to life in all dimensions. These Strates 6 and 12, from the Avant-dire series, presented by the Sit Down gallery, reveal ghostly silhouettes through a subtractive effect, immersed in a night that is as artificial as it is disturbing. E.C
Before I say stratum 6, (2023), by Pauline Fargue. © Pauline Fargue, Courtesy Gallery Sit down
Before I say stratum 12, (2023), by Pauline Fargue. © Pauline Fargue, Courtesy Gallery Sit down
Paris Photo, at the Grand Palais Éphémère, until November 12, 2023. www.parisphoto.com