In this period of confinement, the Frac Normandie Rouen pursues its missions of the diffusion of the collection and in supporting artists using digital tools.
For what should have been on April 25, the opening of the fourth edition of the Normandy Impressionist Festival, the Regional Contemporary Art Fund (Frac) Normandy Rouen associated with the Ile-de-France Photographic Center as well as Micro-Onde, contemporary art center of Onde, offered an exhibition program dedicated to the issue of abstraction in the field of contemporary photography.
This is the first time that this major and current issue in the field of photography is the subject of a major exhibition in France. Linked to the evolution of the image status as well as the rise of news technologies but also to real trends that run through today photography, the plurality of approaches will be revealed in the three complementary exhibitions.
This major project which constitutes a unique opportunity for wonder about the possibility of contemporary photography abstract, revolves around four axes.
A first axis (at Frac) initiates a return to the archeology of photography, from scientific proofs to the appearance of an iconography specific to analog photography. A second (at CPIF) updates formalist approaches. Surfaces, volumes and spaces become the subjects of compositions to abstract renderings sometimes taking installation forms. The third (in the Micro-Onde) is based on an experimental approach of photography highlighting materialological thought and scientific and photographic experiments.
Finally a fourth (at Frac) brings together artists whose quest for abstraction involves either approaches linked to nature or by technological processes.
While abstract landscapes revive the ramifications updated by Rosalind Kraus between impressionism and photography, a new aesthetic is born in connection with the most recent technological possibilities. Innovations related to printing like the creation of high performance computer programs allow photographers to develop a new language, without any reference to the material world.
Frac : La Photographie à l’Épreuve de l’Abstraction
Frac Normandie Rouen (temporarily closed)
April 25 – August 30, 2020
http://www.fracnormandierouen.fr/
