For a few years, experts in contemporary art have been taking interest in a certain group of fashion photographers because they have found that the artists’ staging and direction, inspired by literature, opera, theatre, and cinema, delicately suggest the subconscious desires of our time.
Fashion and fine art are intimately linked, without a precise border. Jacques Olivar’s evocative and ambiguous work is a remarkable example of this tendency. He knows exactly how to instill our time’s state of mind in a visual narration. Jacques Olivar’s images seem as if they are taken from cinema’s golden age of Technicolor when, after the roaring of the MGM lion, desire, passion, nostalgia, suffering, and drama would inevitably unfurl.
The women photographed by Jacques Olivar are both heroines and vulnerable beings. Jacques Olivar directs every detail with precision, all while giving us the necessary space to come up with our own story. Like fashion photographers Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin, Jacques Olivar masters the art of suggestion, visual seduction, and suspense.
When we look at his images, we must ask ourselves what happened a fraction of a second before and after the moment the photograph was captured. Close your eyes, see all the images in a single sequence, dream awake for a moment, give free reign to your internal cinema; the film is going to start. Jacques Olivar’s protagonists, they’re you– whether you be male or female– and we are them. He knows how to combine beauty, seduction, and sensuality with a tireless fascination for narrative.
Information
Galerie Artcube
9 place Fürstenberg 75006 Paris France
November 03, 2017 to December 09, 2017
