On the Other Side

"On the Other Side"

from Friday, April 19, 2024 to Sunday, June 30, 2024

Galerie XII Paris

The history of photography, since its invention, is that of a conquest to gain in details, master the restitution of lights and colors, until giving an ever more realistic representation of the world. Like a pendulum movement, artists have chosen to adopt a fuzzy approach to our surroundings to better appeal to the imagination and fantasy fiction. Susanne Wellm invented a machine to play with blur, to give the illusion of a movement, to introduce a part of mystery. To do this, she drew on a reserve of clichés from all sources, the authors of which are often anonymous; this reserve, which sometimes allowed her to superimpose different images, offers a material from which she made subtle manipulations: an operation that can be likened to that of a weaving that mixes, like a musical counterpoint, long strips of prints with threads distributed very regularly and methodically on the surface of the work, or sometimes interrupted in the middle of the photographs. This weaving thus forms a frame and filters the vision. The artistic gesture focuses on this intermingling: the hand guiding the loom; it is embedded in the matter of the work that will be presented to our eyes. The subject of the image is relegated to the background as if the attitude of the artist wanted to show a form of humility towards it. A curtain has fallen between the spectator and the stage, but we see that behind him a world lives and moves, the transparency of the fabric, as sometimes in the theater, letting guess presences: we perceive reality in bits. The artist's captions for these works lead us down the path of a narrative that explores the idea of a journey, traversing an urban landscape, and exploring unsuspected interiors. Chantal et Gabriel Bauret