Elipsis Gallery presents “Mr. G”, the first solo show of French photographer Gilbert Garcin to be held in Turkey, from May 10 until June 30 2012. Gilbert Garcin spent the majority of his life managing his lamp factory in Marseille France. After he completed a workshop under the supervision of Pascal Dolemieux in Arles at the age of 65, he packed in his business and decided to become a photographer. Now, 83 years old, he continues to create his images with the same eagerness and passion. In his humorous and surreal black & white photographs there is a thin line between fiction and reality. He includes real objects that cast real shadows; stones, mud, sand and string. He plays with scale creating optical illusions that somewhat become reality. A photograph within a photograph, a frame within a frame. He stages himself in the photographs where he shares his own interpretations and reflections with the viewer. ‘I love to tell the stories, mine is the pleasure of the illusionist that tricks people’ he comments as he invites us to ponder philosophical dilemmas such as time, solitude, space and existence. Garcin does so with humor, he continues ‘I try to place it on the surface! The kind of exercise I am doing with my photographs can easily become pompous or overly serious. It’s important to put a layer of humor right away to let people enter into contact with the subject. Humor for me is not an end in itself but thank goodness its there.’ In a sense, humor becomes absurdity Garcin’s work contains characteristics of surrealism inspired by the likes of Magritte and Rousseau.
Gilbert Garcin was born 1929 in Le Ciotat, France and currently lives and works in Marseille. Upon quitting his lamp-making business in Marseille, he started photography at the age of 65. A weeklong workshop under the direction of Pascal Dolemieux was the start of his career as a photographer.
Gilbert Garcin – Mr.G
From May 10 to June 30, 2012
Elipsis Gallery
Tomtom Mah. Bogazkesen Cad.
Hasan Efendi id Hani, 45D3
Istanbul – Turkey
