At the Galerie Particulière, French photographer Laurent Millet offers visitors a reflection on self-portrait, intimacy and decline. Twenty photographs in various formats taken from three different series are displayed in an harmonious arrangement which takes the viewer from one world to the next.
For Translucent Mould of Me (2013), Millet attached iron wires to the walls of a white room. The wires delineate a space, which Millet enters, nude and moving. His silhouette is blurred by the movement, like a shadow on which we can make out one stationary element, a hand of a foot. It takes on an ectoplasmic dimension which, against the motionless decor, distorts the perspective, breaking the viewer away from reality. The result is at once poetic, disturbing and somewhat burlesque.
In Somnium (2014), the ambrotypes, a very 19th century process, calls back to a time when science performed experiments, unaware of their aesthetic impact on its image. Millet photographs himself with polyhedra that he built, and we rediscover his taste for geometric shapes, the mystery of the object and the image of the scientist in his laboratory. The photographs in Somnium have something magical and strange about them although they appear in a familiar setting. We see someone leaning over a polyhedron that appears to float in space, unattainable, with an object resting in blackened palms.
The Last Days of Immanuel Kant (2009), based on the eponymous novella by Thomas de Quincey, is a reflection on the aging philosopher as he loses his ability to think conceptually but not his harmonious relationship to the world, something Laurent Millet can identify with: the lone artist in his studio, like the old philosopher in his study, trying to understand what’s happening to him. This series is softer and brighter than Millet’s others, with dancing colored cubes attached by string. Developed by Samuel Kohs in 1920 for use in psychological evaluation, here the cubes are used like a game in a space that calls to mind Miro or Calder.
Read the full article on the French version of L’Oeil.
EXHIBITION
Laurent Millet : Somnium
Until June 14 2014
La Galerie Particulière
16, rue du Perche
75003 Paris
http://www.lagalerieparticuliere.com/
http://www.laurent-millet.com
