Artist Antoine Poupel likes to transgress his images, to re-examine reality, to subvert the habits of the viewers’ gaze. In doing so, he reimagines an image and creates a platform for reinterpretation, carefully working his photographs, by what seems to be scribbles, and which reveals a rich and significant expression.
In this series of works he subtly proposes a message: his images are made and constructed to interrogate our preconceptions, to accompany him to see what we have previously missed. Freed from the conventions of photography, he allows himself to apply traces.
Here, spirals scribbled around a column bearing a sculpted head initiate a movement of elevation. A multitude of perpendicular traced lines around a sculpted body, give it a sudden radiance. In another photograph, the scratching movements that the artist has scored on the photo paper, embody a living, almost fierce gesture on the image of a body, almost indecipherable.
He reconstructs body elements absent on a statue and even composes a scenario from an image: two statues face each other, he scribbles thick black lines which connect them, symbolizing their reconciliation, their union. An angel, seemingly drawn hastily protects them with its oversized wings. From a simple photo, a whole imaginary world unfurls. Antoine Poupel pulls us into his unique universe, one where the observation is unbound, free from preconception. Imagination is liberated to journey where it is lead, he controls the image and draws us into his vision.
Anne-Marie Sudry
Anne-Marie Sudry is a psychanalyst who lives and works in Paris, France.
Antoine Poupel, Corps romains
September 15 to October 21, 2017
Galerie &co119
119 rue Vieille du Temple
75003 Paris
France
