Photography has always reflected both extreme certainty, as it represents a reality that exists or that has existed, and extreme uncertainty, as we never see what it represents in the way it represents it.
The use of instant development or 4×5 inch films, the choice of leaving the black margins or the traces of clamps in the emulsion while developing, and indeed, the desire to represent an object, reveal a documentary approach of photography and the artist’s desire to fix reality: these images do exist.
Yet, despite the physical existence of the paper, of the film, of the medium and of the document as a whole, the reality of the subject is merely a decoy. These imaginary landscapes are only the result of an intuitive and arbitrary construction, a combination of colours and surfaces captured by the camera.
These recreated landscapes do not exist as such in the outside world.
Even when the “objective” nature of photography is clearly described, the idea that it is a “reflection of the world” can no longer be defended: by playing with light, the artist discovers the possibility of manipulating illusions. Many artificial filters and illusory phenomena play their part in making the difference between the perception of the world and the images the artist make of it.
Though, the fragmentation of images into sequences and the deliberate use of blurs contribute to the temptation not to fix a fragment of the world, but to testify to the impossibility of achieving it! Thomas Paquet’s work is not exclusively dedicated at fixing a portion of space but focuses on the duration itself.
As outlined by Serge Tisseron in Le mystère de la chambre clair, photography accompanies the world more than it freezes it; it is less a means of stopping time than a way of trying to touch the wound of living time.
Here, the gaze loses itself, daydreaming becomes the motto, and things are waving, traveling in the infinity. Images are the reflection of a transforming territory, a place in the making, suggesting a whole universe to be built and reinvented.
Opening Reception: Thursday, 25 January 2018, from 6 to 9 pm
More information at www.thierrybigaignon.com
Information
Galerie Thierry Bigaignon / Hôtel de Retz, Bâtiment A
9 rue Charlot, Paris, France
January 25, 2018 to March 10, 2018
