In the course of her artistic practice, Noémie Goudal has developed a poetic vocabulary of photography nourished by the ambiguity arising from the insertion of fabricated structures into the landscape. These architectural (stairways, domes, towers…) or cosmic (ellipsoids, spheres…) elements are placed in the open ocean, in an expanse of the desert, or in industrial spaces, and then are photographed.
Upon a closer look at these oneiric forms, our gaze easily discerns the traces of handicraft (fold lines, imperfections, ropes, cables…) characteristic of two-dimensional objects designed for the sole purpose of being photographed.
Both image and object, Noémie Goudal’s montages invite one to reverie, even while being unsettling, and create an illusion, even while revealing the simulacrum. Intentionally blurring any points of orientation, these images are borderline between hallucination and fact; they mirror our modern lives torn between evanescent, contradictory regimes of truth.
Extracts from a conversation with Noémie Goudal
My favorite materials are artificial: paper, mirrors, or wood. I love watching how they interact with nature.
The relationship between the artificial and the living is at the core of my work. Architecture thus comes as a natural inspiration. The history of humankind is a history of ambition to gain mastery over the landscape by erecting structures that resist it.
My practice is informed precisely by places that, like heterotopias, may be grasped in the concrete geographic context as well as through human imagination.
On the boundary between reality and fiction, the images of Southern Light Stations explore the mechanism of the celestial sphere, the way it was perceived before the invention of the telescope, that is, as a universal space blending observation, interpretation, and mythological projections. Out of reach, outer space had, for a long time, been considered to be both a mirror image of earthly disorder and a manifestation of the sacred. I draw on stories of the heavens encountered throughout ancient and medieval literature: revolutions of nested orbs, a crystal sun illuminated from within by a potent flame, or balls of fire in the sky; the Earth is often described as resting on top of water enclosed on all sides by the dome of the firmament. The notion of infinity did not appear until the Renaissance.
I am interested in the skies and the stars populating them as a space of re-creation, where human imagination extends infinitely like a fifth celestial body (or the fifth element) made of ether. Returning to the idea that this celestial body resides among the stars and the orbs, one may conjecture that the human mind and the soul are made of the same element. By exploring this notion of the celestial sphere, contemplated and prayed to by humans since they first walked the Earth, the images of Southern Light Stations show how fragile and tentative humankind’s physical and spiritual position is.
This exhibition was organized with the participation of Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire, Paris and the Edel Assanti Gallery, London. Part of the prints on display were produced by Picto lab .
EXHIBITION
Cinquième corps
Noémie Goudal
From February 12th to May 8th, 2016
Le BAL
6, Impasse de la Défense
75018 Paris
France
http://www.le-bal.fr
http://noemiegoudal.com
