The series Au Fil du Temps (As Time Goes By) is a retrospective on the life of Irina Ionesco but also of an artist with a forty-year career. We find an art that grew and evolved from the dream-women of the 1970s to the mysterious universe of fashion in 2010. However, this voyage through time in no way erases the carnal inspiration that guides Irina Ionesco: eroticism. “What inspires me?” says the photographer. “Decadent poetry, symbolist paintings, Hollywood films, Greek tragedies, from perfected kitsch to established perfection. I like artificial paradises, the magic of false luxury, what we invent, what we create through a game of many imaginary mirrors. Like that, I was christened ‘The Rag Queen’, maker of good and bad adventures. My lair, a fantasized caravan, reliquary room where the scenery flows: fabric, trinkets, feathers and birds, laces and silks found during uncountable antique hunts at flea markets in Paris, London, and New York. Precious objects and illusory objects that, reinvented, become supreme luxuries from the Arabian Nights. All of that gathered in a four by five-meter room, an installation made of a thousand objects I fell in love with.”
Irina Ionesco, Au Fil du Temps
Exhibition ended June 4, 2017
Galerie Le Ballon Rouge
Paris
