Despite the postponement until 2021 of the April 2020 Encounters of Young International Photography due to restrictions linked to the coronavirus pandemic, CACP Villa Pérochon is pleased to announce the presentation from June 3 to August 29, 2020 of the exhibition JH Engström: Anknytningar / Correspondances / Correspondences. This exhibition is organised with the support of the Jean-Kenta Gauthier gallery, Paris.
Paying close attention to the architecture of Villa Pérochon, JH Engström has installed works throughout all the exhibition spaces, presenting a great quantity of photographs (over 450), as well as films, including a new one, and many publications.
JH Engström immerses us in his personal and social investigations through a journey that is rich in exceptionally coherent forms of expression across the entire range of media he uses.
Born in 1969 in the region of Värmland in Sweden, JH Ensgtröm moved to Paris at the age of 10. He began his artistic training there with photographer Mario Testino until 1993, when he settled in Stockholm, where he assisted photographer Anders Petersen. He subsequently lived from 1998 to 2000 in New York, where he met photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank, who would preface his first book Shelter / Härbärge (Bokförlaget DN, 1998). JH Engström now lives between Smedsby (Värmland, Sweden) and Montreuil, on the outskirts of Paris.
The exhibition JH Engström: Anknytningar / Correspondances / Correspondences examines, through around ten series and works carried out over the past two decades, the principle of correspondences between the times and the spaces of a life, a theme that is inherent in the work of JH Engström. The title of the exhibition, which translates the word “correspondence” into the three languages used by the artist – Swedish, French and English – highlights the challenge of changes in perspective as regards our relationship with ourselves, others and the world.
Through photography, video and numerous books, the work of JH Engström establishes connections between the various periods of work, with its leitmotifs of self-definition, the search for origins and interpretation of the world. It opens with the video Här / Ici / Here (2018), made in Sweden and in which the artist explores his immediate surroundings while detecting in it traces of his memories. The exhibition, punctuated by self-portraits taken at various times, unfolds progressively with the series Sketch of Paris (2013) – observations gleaned over two decades spent in the French capital – From Back Home (2009) – a look back alongside Anders Petersen (born in 1944) over the traces of their childhoods in their common native region of Värmland – followed by a room dedicated to the artist’s various publications, then the visual poems Try Poetry (from the series Haunts, 2006) and Towards Light (2019). JH Engström questions the multiple meanings of the places of our existence, as in the photographs of beds (from the series Trying to Dance, 2004) – the bed, theatre of our physical and material impulses, but also vehicle of the immaterial journeys of our dreams. The artist also questions our relationship with the body, and thereby our place in the world, through a set of frontal nudes (from the series Trying to Dance, 2004) and the unreleased film Djuret / L’Animal / The Animal ( 2020). Finally, the succession culminates with the video installation Ordet / Le Mot / The Word (2017), in which the artist shows himself writing on the wall of his studio the words that convey the fundamental and abstract notions at the origin of his reflections, in the three languages of his life (Swedish, French and English): when the word becomes an image, the ideas are exposed and their meaning is equivocal.
By establishing correspondences between present and past, here and elsewhere, himself and others, JH Engström creates a work which, like an implicit self-portrait, challenges the link between the world and its interpretation, and questions our identity.
JH Engström is the author of numerous books published since 1998, and is currently preparing two books to come out this year: Day by Day (Editions Pierre Bessard, Paris) and The Frame (Pierre von Kleist, Lisbon).
He is represented by the Jean-Kenta Gauthier gallery.
PLANNED OPENING
From Wednesday June 3 to Saturday August 29, 2020 It should be noted these dates may have to be changed for reasons related to the ongoing health crisis.
Tuesday to Saturday from 1.30 to 6.30 p.m. Closed on public holidays – Free entry
To check on any possible changes due to health safety regulations and to avoid a possible wait, you can contact the Villa Pérochon to book your visit in advance:
E-mail: [email protected] Phone: +33 5 49 24 58 18
