It’s always difficult to define what an artist’s work is. So I’m going to start by telling you everything that Mathilde Biron’s photos are not. You are not in front of priceless displays such as the paintings of David La Chapelle or Ellen Von Unwerth. You are also not faced with a report licked thanks to Photoshop on the daily life of the ultra connected urban youth who finds himself in coworking spots drinking cocktails of forgotten vegetables to benchmark their profile, their life and their likes .
The silhouettes on display reflect a youth who dreads the marks of time. To get away from it, they party, drink, smoke, kiss, hug and kiss. They pose in front of Mathilde Biron’s lens to remind them that their bodies are alive and well in the midst of the pseudo-technological ruins that we inhabit.
From the shores of the ocean to the smoky bars of the Twilight City, from “designer” hotel rooms to the heavy decorations of opulent apartments, these people are agitated and Mathilde is witness to this. But so that this trace remains, it renounces photos that do not exist: the digital image is an endless well in which meaning and matter are drowning.
We have never faced so much censored nudity. The hair, the nipples, the folds, everything goes there to feed this hypocritical modesty. Ken and Barbie as the only dermato and body models: an omnipresent nightmare on our Instagram feed.
“A photograph should be wet,” says Nobuyoshi Araki. Mathilde’s photos speak to our senses. ALL of our senses. They sweat, smell, are rough and soft at the same time. They taste like salt and sex. They remind us of the heady music of the evenings that stretch until morning in the smoke and in the alcohol. These nights during which we free ourselves from the chains of modesty. Yes, she is silly, foolish and heavy, it is a curtain that obscures the reality around us.
Florent Bernades
Mathilde Biron : Idiote pudeur
5-29 february 2020
Jean Louis – La Nuit
66 rue Jean Jacques Rousseau
