Photographing the nature of Hyères and its surroundings is quite a challenge, for it is actually a super-nature, a mix of both luxurious and geometrical mediterranean vegetation and cultivation of exotic plants. How can one give a taste of this multi-faceted Eden that is part of so many people’s everyday life? Cécile Bortoletti wandered everywhere around the area for a year (with her camera , through the passing of seasons and the changes that each one imposed). It turned out to be a nearly ascetic pilgrimage, an initiation drowned in rapture and restlessness. The Bortoletti method, made of compilations, superimpositions and antitheses, is not about trying to decipher the complexity of nature and get a meaning out of it ,nor about unravelling its mysteries. It is, on the contrary, about confrontation with the whole of nature and with its every single little detail, recipe for a kaleidoscopical experience. Paradisiacal landscapes and merciless sun, entanglement and brightness, robust trees and palm diseases, the presence of men among the targets – both voluntary and involuntary – of Bortoletti’s lens, which narrates this story lived in 2012, in an effort to quench a thirst for serendipity. The exhibition will be a accompanied by a catalogue including a short story by Yagos Koliopanos and a preface by Catherine Chevalier.
Cécile Bortoletti lives in Paris where she was born. In the 90’s, she studied cinema and photography at the University Paris VIII, attending the courses of Claudine Eizykman and the seminars of Gilles Deleuze, among others. She then worked as assistant of avant- garde theatre producer and director Marc’O during several years, and later started to create experimental films with the group « MOLOKINO »she created with David T.V, Agathe Gris, Hélèna Villovitch. Following in the steps of Man Ray, they promoted «expanded cinema». The MOLOKINO group was consequently invited in numerous spaces related to film , alternative culture, as well as art institutes, galleries and spaces for improvised acts. At the same time she began to work as a photographer in collaboration with the designers Bless, Martin Margiela, Charles Anastase and Marjan Pejoski. In 1997 she presented her work at the Festival International des Arts de la Mode in the city of Hyères. Cecile Bortoletti’s work has been published in Le Monde, Purple, Dazed & Confused, Self- Service, Commons & Senses, L’Officiel, Crash, Studio Voice,Nikkei, ELLE, Lurve, Metal and others. During three years she worked for Issey Miyake realizing their advertising campaigns for men and women. She continues her work in film and has realized a short-film for the Christian Lacroix exhibition curated by Christian Rizzo and David Dubois. In 2010, she presented a solo exhibition called 18 images/seconde at the Just Jaeckin gallery in Paris.
EXHIBITION
BRACHFELD GALLERY
January 26 – February 23, 2013
78 Rue des Archives
75003 Paris
France
