PHOTAUMNALES

fr




LOVE STORIES
Paul Ardenne,
Invited Curator
Barbara Polla,
Associated Curator
8 October -31 December 2016

Opening on Saturday 8 October at  2.30 pm

LE QUADRILATÈRE
22 rue Saint-Pierre à BEAUVAIS - Phone : 0033 344 15 67 00 (week) / 0033 344 15 30 30 (week-end)
from Tuesday to Friday, 12am-6pm - Saturday and Sunday, 10am-6pm

closed on 25 December

This 2016 edition of the Photaumnales, placed under the sign of love, desires to be generous. Just as love feeds and thrills us, the loves related in “Love Stories” nourish and enliven us. Here, photography is the index of multiple amorous events, of multifarious amours. As you might expect: after all, love—the archer—is blind.
“Love Stories” ventures into a realm of love without borders—with uncalculating openness. Because we no longer need to distinguish between forms of love; we no longer need to assign love a quality, to inscribe it in hierarchies like the ones bequeathed by idealism tainted with moralist propaganda, which casts down carnal love and raises up agape, the love we lavish on the divine. Instead, our guiding principle will be the amorous mechanism, the principle of attraction, the flux that engenders attachment, instilled by nature in all its creatures, conscious or not. Bodies (like the atoms of which they are constituted) live by movement, between the mechanism of necessity and the activation of sensorial flows. This sometimes-unifying movement is what we mean by “love”, to simplify what is a complex reality. What matters here is instinct, drive, feeling—not what draws the drive, not the object of the feeling. Love is a sensation first, becoming a concept only afterwards.

Paul Ardenne and Barbara Polla

With:
Janet Biggs, Morgane Callegari, Enna Chaton, Mat Collishaw, Iris Crey, Alix Delmas, Aurélie Dubois, mounir fatmi, Shaun Gladwell, Lauren Fleishman, Dana Hoey, Sandra Hoyn, Ali Kazma, Adriana Lestido, Tuomo Manninen, Robert Montgomery, Gianni Motti, Mads Nissen, Anders Petersen, Pierre et Gilles, Gérard Rancinan, Kiah Reading and Pamela Arce, Olivier Rebufa, Rebecca Russo and Georges H. Rabbath, Andres Serrano, Tejal Shah, Malick Sidibé, Mathilde Troussard, Joel-Peter Witkin.

 


 
Robert MONTGOMERY

MONTGOMERY BD 01Robert Montgomery is a post-situationist visual poet and artist who creates with his words and phrases. His letters in flames, which arise from the most unexpected places, (here on a beach in the south of France) revive a forgotten magic by the purifying act of being set afire. In reference to the contextual tradition, the artist places his work in public space in order to capture public attention in a surprising way. Among his numerous international exhibitions, one of the most iconic is “Echoes of Voices in the High Towers”, which was organized by Neue Berliner Raume and shown in the city of Berlin during the summer of 2012.

For LOVE STORIES, Robert Montgomery offers us this message, which opens the exhibition:

LOVE IS THE REVOLUTIONARY ENERGY THAT
RELIGION IS ONLY A POOR SHADOW OF
THAT LAW IS THE PANICKED PATRIARCH OF/
LOVE IS THE REAL TEMPORARY LIGHT INSIDE US
THAT SAVES US EVERY DAY FROM OURSELVES,
AND SAVES US FOREVER FROM
RELIGION AND LAW.

Born in 1972 in Scotland. Works and lives in London.
Graduated from the Edinburgh College of Art, he has participated in the program of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

www.robertmontgomery.org



 
Janet BIGGS

BIGGS BD 01Janet Biggs is known for her videos, photographs, and performances which explore extreme geographies. She highlights the existential quests of those who evolve from such environments, who reach to the limits of what is possible: a speed-loving biker, an Arctic explorer, a coal miner, a glacier specialist. The work of Janet Biggs has been the subject of museum exhibitions in the US and in France (MAC Lyon). Of her exhibitions in the US, her works have been shown in solo-exhibitions at the Tampa Museum of Art (2011), the Blaffer Art Museum (2015), and the SCAD Museum of Art (2016).

For LOVE STORIES, Janet Biggs shares with the spectator her love of horses: First Love. For the artist, the horse is a symbol of freedom and constraint, of energy and desire. A passionate rider, Janet Biggs has done numerous equestrian performances. With the help of a group of performers, she has developed a dance for horses and humans—executed together.

Born in 1959 in Harrisburg, NY. Works and lives in New York.
Graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design (US).

www.jbiggs.com


 
Morgane CALLEGARI


CALLEGARI BD 01Morgane Callegari combines the disciplines of photography and style, framing herself as the subject of her work. In scenes that take place in a seemingly calm environment, she draws her inspiration from the dreamlike world represented in fairytales. Yet all of the attitudes, postures, and colors that saturate the composition cause us to doubt the perfectness within which the body seems to fit in the scene. Perhaps it is an excess of Baroquism, of exuberance. The world that Morgane Callegari creates prefers illusion to the raw reality of body, society, and existence.

For LOVE STORIES, Morgane Callegari offers her Young girls in flowers, speaking to us of beauty, exquisite or mild—but only on the surface. The ambiguity in the work of the young artist is rooted in the aesthetics of the marvelous, ripe with a fragile happiness, always at the edge of its own destruction. Bright photographs where dark forces lurk, sensed but unseen.

Born in 1991 in l’Alpe D’Huez, France. Works and lives in Amiens.
Master's Degree in Artistic Theory and Practice from the University of Amiens.

www.morganecallegari.jimdo.com

 


 
Enna CHATON

CHATON BD 01By exposing both feelings and the body, photographer and filmmaker Enna Chaton explores the question of the sphere of intimacy with finesse and erotic beauty. Transgression becomes a game that raises and supplements the forbidden without deleting it. Indeed, this game is the subject of most of Enna Chaton's works. The artist seeks to capture the moment of letting-go, of slipping, the intensity of the experience.
Her work is found in many public collections in France.

For LOVE STORIES, Enna Chaton gives us access to the image of the opening of the body, which effectively assumes moments of abandonment—the self in the presence of another. The suspension of sense and the admission of a breakdown, leading towards the promise of future enjoyment.

Born in 1969 in Grenoble, France. Works and Lives near Sète.
National Postgraduate degree in Visual Arts from the National School of Arts in Cergy-Pontoise.

www.ennachaton.fr


 
Mat COLLISHAW

COLLISHAW BD 01Mat Collishaw is a quintessential artist of the sublime. A virtuoso of beauty, he also depicts the harsh reality of the world, of human “corruption”, a term that is dear to him. A critic of our never-sated taste for images and our “passion for the victim”, he instils in all of his works a Baudelairean thrill. Scholar of art history, Collishaw borrows inspirations and techniques from the past, which he never ceases to revisit: taking and manipulating images that allow us to dream, like a Master of Illusion. The works of Collishaw are among the collections of the Tate Modern in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

For LOVE STORIES, Mat Collishaw draws inspiration from George La Tour, Lorraine painter of the 17th century. He offers us two of his Single Nights, in which he gives, through the magic of aesthetics, a new existence—a moment of happiness—to young single mothers in deprived neighborhoods in London. Their baby on their lap, they radiate in the candlelight, Caravaggesque, in a sumptuous half-light.

Born in 1966 in Nottingham, England. Works and lives in London.
A graduate of Goldsmith College in London, he is a part of the Young British Artists movement.

www.matcollishaw.com


 
Iris CREY

CREY BD
Iris Crey continues a transdisciplinary investigation on the universality of sentiments. Through iconographic citations, allegorically referring to couples that have marked the history of art, Iris Crey performs a photographic act without a camera (post-photography). The framing isolates a subject to match its sometimes related object: arrow and target, fork and knife, ball and racquet, seashell and telephone. These mismatched borrowings select everyday objects, elevating them to the rank of totems. The objects may have once belonged to the artists, to their works, or may be represented in their portraits.

For LOVE STORIES, Iris Crey presents Hors Paires, in the form of a long photographic frieze. The artist explores, through a visual gesture of reappropriation, the bonds that tied, briefly or at length, two people: Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, Vera Mercer and Daniel Spoerri, Setsuko and Balthus, Alice Springs and Helmut Newton, Lee Miller and Man Ray, Renée Perle and Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Eliane Radigue and Arman, Georgia O’Keefe and Edward Steichen, Nancy Shaver and Haim Steinbach, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Rosine Baldaccini and César.

Born in 1985, France. Works and lives in Paris.
Doctor of Arts, Iris Crey conducted his postdoctoral research at the CNRS on the role and function of cultural, artistic, and media representation.

 

Alix DELMAS

DELMAS BD 01Alix Delmas is a photographer, video artist, performer, and sculptor. She has shown her works most notably in La Force de l'Art, at the Grand Palais, as well as the Louis Vuitton cultural center in Paris, and the Drawing Center in New York. The visual configurations of her work draw near the world of cinema, and she often uses tricks and accessories. Her works feature ambiguous self-expressions, which she manages to fuse together by adopting surrealist principles—for instance, by placing herself in her own images. Alix Delmas's constructions take place in the moment, and are offered to the spectator with a threshold of multiple possible readings.

For Love stories, Alix Delmas offers "Le baiser et Persona" , transcending the line between the interior and exterior of the body, an osmosis between in and out—between one and another. A kiss that never comes, its recipient unknown. Two pink beds appear in the prairie. With a mixture of humor and emotion, Alix Delmas leaves us with the pleasure of an enigma.

Born in 1962 in Bayonne, France. Works and lives in Paris.
Alix Delmas is a graduate of Beaux-Arts de Paris

www.alixdelmas.com

 



Aurélie DUBOIS

DUBOIS BD 02

Aurélie Dubois is a multidisciplinary artist who consistently seeks to bring together creation and theory. She principally explores sexuality and the relationship between men and women, uncertainty, madness, marginality, and the realm of the strange. Aurelie Dubois brings new life to the erotic image and awakens our imagination.

For LOVE STORIES, she chooses to offer us a visual reflection of love with her unedited series Love means giving something you don't have to someone who doesn't want it, a quote borrowed from psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan. She shows us the multiple states of being—a certain madness, a nonsense of incomprehension, thwarted desire, solitude. The artist often choses diversion to show the complicity of her characters, the world of the strange, the silence of something difficult to name, to define, to unveil.

Born in 1975 in France. Works and lives in Paris.

www.aurelie-dubois.com
 


mounir FATMI

FATMI BD 02

mounir fatmi, committed artist, produces installations as well as videos, drawings, paintings and numerous series of photographs. Situated between two cultures, the East and the West, he takes a critical look at the intersecting histories that result. His work revolves around questions concerning power: authority, religion, politics and history as the foundations of our society.

His works have been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the Museum of Modern Art in Moscow, and at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

For LOVE STORIES, mounir fatmi presents four photographs of the series Casablanca Circles, images of the longest kiss in the history of cinema, images that evoke love in a special context: the political, personal and complex—impossible love. This kiss has inspired fatmi even more than the famous kiss between Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. He uses the approach of scientist Frederick Soddy, who revisited the theorem of Descartes on how circles and spheres can touch and the tangents that result. The science of desire.

Born in 1970 in Tanger, Morocco. Lives and works in Paris

www.mounirfatmi.com




Lauren FLEISHMAN

FLEISHMAN BD 02 Lauren Fleishman is a professional American photographer. Her career began when her first work was published in the New York Times Magazine. The relationship to the body is central to her work. Models of the bodies of obese children in the United States, bodies in wheelchairs, bodies in love. For Lauren Fleishman, the body is used as a pretext to speak of our society. Lauren Fleishman is a regular contributor to magazines—Le Monde, The New York Times, and Time Magazine.

For LOVE STORIES, she presents pictures from the series The Lovers, the title of her first publication in 2015. The work is a series of photographs of couples who have shared their lives for over fifty years. The perspective of Lauren Fleishman transforms journalistic photographs into intimate portraits. She moves us, speaking of the effect of time on interpersonal relationships.

Born in 1981 in New York. Works and lives in London.
Graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York, she received a scholarship to study at the National School of Fine Arts in Paris, France.

www.laurenfleishman.com




Shaun GLADWELL

GLADWELL BD 02

For Shaun Gladwell, the body is his working tool. Its extensions and gestures are the subject of his works of art—video, photography, performances, paintings and drawings alike. In the frame of his interest for the body, he gives significant attention to those who are transgender, especially in his works Double Voyage and Skateboarders vs Minimalism. Shaun Gladwell represented Australia in the 53th Venice Art Biennale.

For LOVE STORIES, Shaun Gladwell offers an original work, titled Tripitaka, which was the subject of a video, photographs (stills), writings and poems: an experimental work devoted to his first love, a young hero/heroine monk of the cult Japanese TV series Monkey. The artist created his portraits from sequences of images, blended and slowed. In doing this, he recreates the discovery of his first childhood love.

Born in Sydney, Australia. Works and lives in London and Sydney.
Graduated from Sydney College of the Arts, with a Master's Degree from the College of Fine Arts of New South Wales and the Goldsmith College of London.

 

Dana HOEY

HOEY BD 01

Dana Hoey uses the camera to reveal the ambiguous and often ignored aspects of feminine existence. Whether intimate or professional, the relationship between the women she depicts remains mysterious, in the liminal space between complicity and aggression. Her work has been shown at Paris Photo, 2012 and at the Smithsonian Institution, in her solo exhibition titled “The Phantom Sex”.

For LOVE STORIES, Dana Hoey presents a series of photographs with evocative titles: Secretary, Commander, Champagne Bath, Pregnant Smoker, Young Painter, and 3 Bodies in Grass. She immerses us in her enigmatic and fascinating universe, filled with the forces of desire, sometimes obscured. Her depictions of femininity resist the roles that women and their bodies are generally expected to play. Amidst the backdrop of beautiful and sophisticated scenery, Dana Hoey allows us to penetrate into the mental world that moves and pulses behind the physical image of her female protagonists.

Born in 1966 in San Francisco. Works and lives in New York.
Dana Hoey received a BA in Philosophy from Wesleyan University and a Master’s in Photography from Yale University. She teaches at Columbia University.

www.danahoey.com
 


Sandra HOYN

HOYN BD 01Sandra Hoyn is an independent photojournalist who works for magazines, NGOs, and on her own personal photo projects, focusing on social, environmental, and human rights issues. In 2015, she received the Special Prize L’Oeil de la Photographie / Nuits Photographiques for her work Jenny’s Soul.

For LOVE STORIES, Sandra Hoyn presents Jenny’s Soul, which tells the story of an unusual love between a man (Dirk) and his silicone doll (Jenny). Her work allows us to penetrate into the daily life of a solitary man who hides his relationship from the world. Without ever showing the face of the man, Sandra Hoyn succeeds in discovering the secret life in which Dirk has chosen to live. Her work results in a poignant “Love Story”, hidden due to the fear of misunderstanding, and revealed so that it may be comprehended, or even more—shared.

Born in 1976 in Wolfenbüttel, Germany. Works and lives in Hamburg.
Sandra Hoyn graduated in 2005 from the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences.

www.sandrahoyn.de
 


Ali KAZMA

KAZMA BD 02Ali Kazma is a Turkish video artist and photographer best known for his series documenting human activity and labor, exploring the meaning of production and social organization. While his video work is entirely centered on human activity, his photography depicts landscapes and skies on a scale in which humans are only a speck. In 2012, his work was the subject of a solo show at Paris Photo.

Ali Kazma loves books, and it is this passion that he channels in LOVE STORIES. He is the author of more than eight thousand photographs taken in libraries, bookshops, print houses, bookbinderies and many other places related to books. “Books are part of my life. I cannot imagine life without them. For me, they are essential to humanity. I love books because they feel good, because they are both large enough and small enough to fit into my hands, and into yours. They are like an organ of my body; they are bodies in and of themselves.”

Born in 1971 in Istanbul, Turkey. Lives and works in Istanbul.
Graduated from the New School University in New York, with a Master’s in Cinema studies.
Featured in The Turkish Pavillion in the 2013 Venice Biennale.




Adriana LESTIDO    

LESTIDO BDCourtesy Galerie Clair, Munich

Adriana Lestido is a photojournalist and the author of several essays and books including Mujeres presas in 2001 and 2008, Madres e hijas in 2003, Interior in 2010, La Obra in 2011, and Lo Que Se Ve in 2012. In 2010, she was invited by PhotoEspaña to exhibit a retrospective, Amores Difíciles (Difficult Loves, photography 1979/2007) at the Casa de América, Madrid. For Adriana Lestido, photography is a tool that allows her to understand the mystery of human relationships.

For LOVE STORIES, the artist shows thirteen photographs from the series Madres e Hijas (Mothers and Daughters). These black and white photographs explore the mother-daughter relationship: resemblance, tenderness, confrontation, pure love. The vision of Adriana Lestido evokes the power of this bond, which embodies our most elemental feelings of love, arousing intense emotions.

Born in 1955 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Lives in Buenos Aires and Mar de las Pampas, Argentina.
Studied photography at the Institute of Photographic Art and Audiovisual Techniques in Avellaneda. Her work is represented by Clair Gallery, Munich.

www.adrianalestido.com
 


Tuomo MANNINEN

MANNINEN BD 02Tuomo Manninen is a Finnish Photographer principally known for his group portraits, which he has shown around the world since 1995. His images are a cross between documentary and staged photography, and take an anthropological approach. Aware that they are being photographed, his subjects play an active role in the dynamics of the photograph and participate in the composition’s structure. His works have been shown at Arles by Harald Szeemann, and adorn (among others) the collections of the MAC Lyon, the Finnish Museum of Photography in Helsinki, the Danish Museum of Photography in Odense, and the Neue Berliner Kunstverein in Berlin.

For LOVE STORIES, Tuomo Manninen presents Household, his most recent series of photographs. In this series, he represents families (couples, children, dogs…) in front of their houses, all which appear similar. In reality, they are the artist’s neighbors, posing with those that they are closest to, their “circle of love”. To create this series, Manninen drew inspiration from the Finnish world “Ruokakunta” (Household), meaning “those who eat from the same refrigerator”.

Born in 1962 in Jyväskylä, Finlande. Works and lives in Helsinki.

www.tuomomanninen.com
 


Gianni MOTTI

The works of Gianni Motti are out of frame: a series of one-time interventions, most often targeting the world of art. From staging his own death in July 1989, to claiming the California earthquake in 1992, Gianni Motti ingeniously improvises the upheaval and appropriation of everyday events. He has shown his works at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich, among others, and in the 51st edition of the Venice Biennale in 2005.

For LOVE STORIES, Gianni Motti shows us September 11, 2001, a photograph depicting two teenagers under an olive tree in San Giminiano, Tuscany. His work expresses a gentle, almost biblical serenity: the olive tree, the blue sky, the Tuscan breeze, flowering youth. Written on the yellow t-shirt of the boy is “Gianni Motti Assistant". For us, it is September 11th—the Twin Towers are collapsing, people jumping from the windows to escape the flames. Yet here, in this sunny afternoon in the soft Italian countryside, it is impossible to know this. Thus presents the question: how can we welcome love and reality, when at the same time violence and tragedy ravages elsewhere?

Born in 1958 in Sondrio, Italy. Works and lives in Geneva, Switzerland, and in the world.




Mads NISSEN

NISSEN BD 02Mads Nissen is a photojournalist who also pursues his personal projects. For two years he moved to Shanghai to document the human and social consequences of China’s historic economic rise. He has published two books, Amazonas in 2013, and De Faldne (The Fallen) in 2010, the latter regarding the war in Afghanistan. In 2014, the artist embarked on his photographic project to depict homophobia in Russia.

For LOVE STORIES, Mads Nissen shows a selection of the project he developed in Russia, which deals with the expression of queer, “rainbow” love, and the life of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Faced with the intense beauty of these images, one wonders even more why the depiction of two mothers with three children, a marriage between man and man, or the bodies of two men making love in the night is still seen by some as disturbing.

Born in 1979, in Hobro, Denmark. Works and lives in Copenhagen.
Graduated from The Danish School of Media and Journalism in Copenhagen. He received the World Press Photo of the Year award in 2015, and the Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation Scholarship for Documentary Photography and Film in 2011.

www.madsnissen.com
 


Anders PETERSEN

PETERSEN BD 01Anders Petersen is a photographer characterized by both his roughness and his tenderness. With his portraits of the lower class, social outcasts, and the marginalized, he establishes an inventory that is as powerful and fragile as humanity itself—the sole focus of his work. Photography, for Anders Petersen, is to bring light to the shadow. All of his images, framed up close or from afar, feature someone. Whether it is an an anonymous being, one that is outside of the range of the “human family”, or an animal, each of his photographs offers the possibility of “being”, from an ontological perspective.

For LOVE STORIES, Peterson offers us a series of photographs recently shown at the BNF (Paris), a series that more closely evokes philia than eros. The artist does not appropriate his subjects. Rather, he approaches them amicably, giving them a new existence in their images, which grow bigger than themselves.

Born in 1944 in Solna, Sweden. Works and lives in Stockholm, Sweden.
He studied photography with Christer Stromholm; cofounded SAFTRA, a group of photographers from Stockholm with Kenneth Gustavsson, and was the director of the Göteborg School of Photography and Film.

www.anderspetersen.se
 


Pierre et Gilles

PIERREGILLES 01 BDAmour défunt (Sylvie Vartan et Johnny Haliday), 2007 - Courtesy Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris-Bruxelles Pierre et Gilles is the pseudonymous for the French artist duo formed by Pierre Commoy, born in 1950 in La Roche-sur-Yon, and Gilles Blanchard, born in 1953 in Le Havre.

They work and live in Paris, and were awarded the Grand Prix of Photography (1993). 

Pierre et Gilles have been creating unique hand-painted photographs since 1977. Their artistic process is fixed, with Pierre on photography and Gilles retouching the photos with paint. Their works are glamorous and kitsch, a mixture of sexualized popular aesthetic and the glorification of homosexuality, the metamorphic body and the celebration of the transgender—all produced with refinement.

The work of the duo has been shown at major exhibitions at the European House of Photography and the Jeu de Paume in Paris, as well as the New Museum in New York.

For LOVE STORIES, Pierre et Gilles present three photographs: the designer Rick Owens and Michèle Lamy in the style of Orpheus and Eurydice; Saint Barbara, where the religious figure holds in her hand not the traditional peacock feather, but a magical crucifix-baguette; and l’Amour défunt (Love deceased), featuring the unforgettable French musician couple, Sylvie Vartan and Johnny Hallyday. The collection results in a mixture of popular iconographic figures in a world of reconciliation and love.

Pierre et Gilles is the pseudonymous for the French artist duo formed by Pierre Commoy, born in 1950 in La Roche-sur-Yon, and Gilles Blanchard, born in 1953 in Le Havre.
They work and live in Paris, and were awarded the Grand Prix of Photography (1993). 

 


Gérard RANCINAN

RANCINAN BD 02Considered as one of the great French photographers of today, Gérard Rancinan defines himself as "an enlightened witness to the transformation of humanity." Self-taught, he became the youngest photojournalist in France in 1971. His photographs, directed at the absurd caricature of our contemporary world, were displayed in 2009 at the Palais de Tokyo and in 2012 at the Milan Triannual.

For LOVE STORIES, Gerard Rancinan shows Les Basiers (Kisses). Though Rancinan is mostly known for his staged photography, he also speaks of reality in his work, and informs us of the pace and magnitude of historic events. Two policemen kissing. Two young naked women embracing. Rancinan does not attempt to take a moral, social, or political stance by depicting homosexuality. He simply seeks to show that same-sex love exists. What good is there to deny it? We kiss because we love, because we want to confuse our body into that of another, the beloved. Thus it matters not what the photograph shows—it suffices that it seeks to embody love.

Gérard Rancinan was born in 1953 in Talence, France.
He lives and works in Paris, Cap Ferret, and California.

www.rancinan.com
 


Kiah READING et Pamela ARCE

READING ARCE BD 01Kiah Reading received the Australia Council for the Arts award in 2015 and has participated in residencies in Peru and Turkey. The artist creates a hybridization between physical objects and experiences. He is interested in desires, behaviors, social systems and communication between human beings.

Pamela Arce lives and works in Lima, Peru. In 2014, she won the Lima's Young Contemporary Art Award. Her signature is combining sculpture and sound installation to generate perceptive works that become catalysts of emotions and knowledge.

For LOVE STORIES, Kiah Reading and Pamela Arce present In each other’s lectures, developed during a residency in Istanbul. The work consists of three versions of forty books. In 2013, one of the artists found a collection of four hundred photographs of a Turkish woman taken between 1971 and 1973—a woman obviously in love with her photographer. For the two artists, this was an invitation to elaborate on how these two people (the photographer and the woman he photographed) created their memories together. The project is at once a study, a survey, and a collage. Amidst voyeurism and nostalgia, the project is a reminder of our mortality, an operation to salvage the past.

Born in Australia and Peru, respectively.
Work and live in Brisbane (Australia) and Lima (Peru).

www.kiahreading.com
www.pamela-a.com
 


Olivier REBUFA

REBUFA BD 01Olivier Rebufa became known in 1989 from his hybrid visual practice—integrating photographic self-portraits with dolls, figurines, toys and models, constructing a miniature universe. His works is among the collections of the National Foundation for Contemporary Art, the Rencontres d'Arles, and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, in Paris.

Equating creation to a virtuoso form of love, Olivier Rebufa presents to LOVE STORIES his ironic stagings. In each image, the artist is shown with a Barbie doll exactly as if it were real. The photomontages of Olivier Rebufa play with seduction, embracing the artist-hero's desire to be the “cause of himself"—an individual controlling both his actions and his emotional life. His obsessive presence in his photographs are in fact a call to be seen and loved, with the nostalgia of a love that, if it were real, would be true love.

Born in 1958 in Dakar, Senegal. Works and lives in Marseille.

 


Rebecca RUSSO et Georges H RABBATH

RUSSO RABBATH BD 01Rebecca Russo is the founder and president of the Foundation Art and Science Videoinsight® and Videoinsight® Center. She studied Clinical Psychology, specializing in Relational Psychotherapy. She is the inventor of the use of video art in the diagnosis and treatment of pathological psychological disorders.
Henri Georges Rabbath, who works with Rebecca Russo, is a Beirut-based photographer

Life, according to Rebecca Russo, is art and art is life. For LOVE STORIES, the Russo-Rabbath duo offers I Woke Up in Beirut, a work that deals with the obsession to construct a desirable self-image. If life is art, says Rebecca Russo, then every moment of existence can be a work of art. With photographer Henri Georges Rabbath, art starts with ingenuity, boldness and delicacy. The collaboration between the two results in eight-hundred pictures taken by Georges Rabbath each day. According to Rebecca Russo, the amount of daily photographs was important to create a real confusion between art and life. Between narcissism and dedication. Loving oneself to perhaps love another.
 


Andres SERRANO

SERRANO BD 01Andres Serrano presented his first major exhibition in 1985. His photographic work focuses on social issues and issues related to gender and religion. His works are featured, among others, at the CAPC of Bordeaux Museum of Contemporary Art, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Institutes of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Boston and Amsterdam.

For LOVE STORIES, Andres Serrano presents photographs belonging to one of his most memorable series, History of Sex. Despite the cold rawness of its sex scenes, which feature ondinism, fisting and bestiality, History of Sex was not seen as scandalous when it was first presented in the 1990’s, or at least, not very. The piece is weary of sexual repression and of manners. The images show that the body has sexual needs, and that pleasure increases when love and sex are combined. What determines happiness, away from romanticism, is the corporeality of the individual—lived in the fullness of his or her fantasies and expectations, and accompanied by an attentive and helpful partner. Sex is also love, no matter which kind of sex, regardless of which love.

Born in 1950 in New York, where he works and lives.
He graduated from the Brooklyn Museum Art School in New York.

www.andresserrano.org
www.nathalieobadia.com
 


Tejal SHAH

SHAH BD 01

Tejal Shah is a contemporary visual artist who deals with video, photography and installation. Their* work is mainly focused on gender, sexuality and religion. In 2003, they co-founded and organized "Larzish" in India, the first International Festival of Film on sexuality and gender plurality. In 2013, they were featured in Documenta 13 with the video Between the Waves. They use a feminist and queer approach in order to question the truth of history. In the video I Love My India (2003), they investigate the ignorance of the genocide against the Muslim minority in Gujarat, 2002.

For LOVE STORIES, Tejal Shah shows a unique photograph entitled The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne / Burned on the water. The work is part of the Hijra Fantasy series, which explores the desires of Hijras—transsexual women in India who are often ostracized and treated with distrust. Tejal Shah recalls the social fragility of this ancestral community, pointing to theIr radiant beauty.

Born in Bhilai (Indian Union) in 1979. Lives and works in Mumbai.
Graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago, and Bard College in New York.

www.tejalshah.in 



Malick SIDIBÉ

SIDIBE BD 01Nuit de Noël (Happy Club) - Courtesy Galerie Magnin-A, Paris

Malick Sidibé, nicknamed "the eye of Bamako", is a photographer known for his images depicting the life and exuberant culture of Bamako. The images, in black and white, most often depict young people living in the city between 1950-1970. From midnight until dawn, Sidibé roamed the city, party-hopping to the music of the kora, photographing carefree youth in their Sunday best. Sidibé's work is featured in numerous public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. In 2007, he received the Golden Lion for his career at the 52nd Venice Biennale. The dancers presented for LOVE STORIES by Malick Sidibé seem untouchable, in a world of their own, focused on their movement. Their smiles and their steps, which are perfectly in sync, seem to tell us of love. That to truly love someone is to let them be free, and to give the gift of oneself to another. Love is a dance where the dancers’ bodies move as one, flowing seamlessly together.

Born in 1936, died in 2016 in Mali.
He lived and worked in Mali.

 

Mathilde TROUSSARD

TROUSSARD 01 BDQuestioning female sentiments, Mathilde Troussard collaborates with Victory magazine and with the Belgian Psychologies magazine. She directed her first solo exhibition in Paris in 2014.

Mathilde Troussard divides her time between photography, documentary filmmaking and teaching. She is interested in set design, style and performance art. The human being is at the heart of her work, staged in a poetic universe magnified by decoration.

For LOVE STORIES, Mathilde Troussard presents the series Waiting for Him. Her shifting scenes plunge us into a childish dimension, playful and ironic. In her works, the woman is at the center, women awaiting their Ken, their prince charming. Her style is at once humorous and fresh, leaving us with a bitter taste.

Born in France in 1982. Works and lives in Brussels.
Graduate of Fine Arts in Rennes and Angers in 2006 and from the National School of Visual Arts of La Cambre (Brussels), where she joined the Urban Space workshop (2008).

www.mathildetroussard.be



Joel-Peter WITKIN

WITKIN BD 01Courtesy Galerie Beaudoin Lebon, ParisJoel-Peter Witkin's career began as a photographer during the Vietnam War between 1961 and 1964. Witkin then became the official photographer of City Walls Inc. His personal experience as a photojournalist inspired the dark themes of his work, which depict images of corpses and death. His photographs have been widely exhibited, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and the National Library of France in Paris.

For LOVE STORIES Witkin shows his 1982 photograph The Kiss. It is an exceptional kiss. Two men, heads without bodies, striking, old, emaciated. The two otherworldly faces are perhaps the same person—mirror images of each other. Joel-Peter Witkin’s The Kiss shows us an irrevocable kiss…

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1939. Works and lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
He studied sculpture at Columbia University (BFA 1974) and obtained a Master’s degree from the University of New Mexico in 1986.