The title of the exhibition is Eden Eden. The images are the work of Rachel Krief and Richard Darmon, two photographers passionate about paradise. Her background is theater and cinema, his literature.
When we decided to work on the theme of Eden, it seemed appropriate to preserve the ineffable dimension of the myth while avoiding, on the one hand, simplistic representation and, on the other, any narrative that would closely follow the Biblical story. What else could we have done, anyway? In fact, some of our images allude to the confusion of Tohu wa-Bohu. Adom 1 & 2 and Cosmogonie 1 & 2 are distant, water-pool reflections of the emerging world, a subjective and elusive vision, as we now know it, like the Platonic allegory of the cave. The palm tree, seen as in a mirage, echoes the tree in the Garden. The evanescent young woman represents the first Eve; the second woman, lying naked on a bed in torpor, next to a book entitled Judas, is a representation of humanity after the fall. Other nudes, seen from behind, avoid complete nakedness that would be conscious of itself. The viewer’s eye accompanies the woman while respecting her modesty. We felt it was essential to address what this lost paradise means to us, in our own way, through a blaze of colors and a prelapsarian haze. Paradox of paradoxes, the exile from the Garden of Eden gave access to knowledge and civilization. The scales fell from man’s eyes, beauty appeared less dazzling, but persisted through the labor of man and the animals that he ruled over. The neon lights of the city are fascinating, but Babel remains an illusion in which something has been lost.
Rachel Krief and Richard Darmon, Eden Eden
January 29 to February 10, 2018
Galerie Maître Albert
6, rue Maître Albert
75005 Paris
France
