From April 19 to June 29, 2024, Galerie XII presents an exhibition by Danish artist Susanne Wellm, curated by Chantal and Gabriel Bauret. Entitled De l’autre côté (“On the Other Side”), this exhibition explores urban and everyday narratives.
Drawing on a vast collection of images found in photo albums, historical books, film footage and her own snapshots, Susanne Wellm establishes links between the personal dramas of everyday life and the history of collective trauma in modern Europe. Images are cut up and dissolved, only to be symbolically rewoven and reconnected. Through collage and montage, Susanne Wellm assembles glimpses of a sometimes banal reality into poetic, multi-layered pictorial spaces, where fiction and fact, stagnation and movement, inside and outside, merge into highly significant moments, cinematically tracing an action, while remaining open to interpretation.
“The history of photography, since its invention, is that of a conquest to gain in detail, to master the rendering of light and color, until giving an ever more realistic representation of the world. And, as if in a pendulum swing, artists have, on the other hand, sought to rediscover a summary approach to our environment, the better to appeal to the imagination and come close to fiction. Susanne Wellm has invented a machine to play with blur, to give the illusion of movement, to introduce an element of mystery. To do this, she drew on a stock of shots from all over the world, often taken by anonymous photographers; this stock, which sometimes enabled her to superimpose different images, provided the material for her subtle manipulations: an operation that can be likened to weaving, in which long strips of prints are interwoven, like a musical counterpoint, with threads that spread out very evenly and methodically across the surface of the work, or are sometimes interrupted in the middle of the photographs. This weaving forms a weave and filters the vision. The artistic gesture focuses on this interweaving, with the hand guiding the loom; it is housed in the work of the very material of the work that will be offered to our gaze. The subject of the image is relegated to the background, as if the artist’s attitude were intended to demonstrate a form of humility towards it. A curtain has fallen between the viewer and the stage, but behind it we glimpse a world that lives and moves, the transparency of the fabric, as sometimes in the theater, hinting at presences: we perceive reality in bits and pieces. And the caption that the artist gives to each of these works leads us along the path of a narrative in which the idea of a journey takes shape, the crossing of an urban landscape, the exploration of unknown interiors.”
Chantal and Gabriel Bauret
Galerie XII Paris – Susanne Wellm. De l’autre côté
April 19 – June 29, 2024
Exhibition organized by Chantal et Gabriel Bauret
14 rue des Jardins Saint-Paul 75004 Paris
Opening hours: Tuesday-Friday: 2pm-7pm
Saturday: 12pm-7pm
& by appointment outside these hours
Information
Galerie XII
14 rue des Jardins Saint-Paul, 75004 Paris
April 19, 2024 to June 29, 2024
