What characterizes Olivier Verley’s photographic approach is the permanence of the places he summons. Whether it be the French Vexin that he has been exploring since his childhood, the banks of the Oise, or the hills of the Gers, landscape is consistent in the work, however, the photographer’s eye is always different. The journey to which he invites us is a foray in the areas where he is conducting an attentive and in-depth study (the date and hour of the shot are scrupulously noted).
Olivier Verley’s photographs develop a visual memory of landscapes traveled, but there is nothing systematic about them. In these images, he is revealing multiple facettes of the same place through the care he brings to framing and, particularly, through the attention he pays to light. Olivier Verley works in film and in black and white. He addresses photography in an almost pictural way, joining the line of late-19th century landscape photographers, like Gustave Le Gray, and, by extension, joining that of landscape painters as well. Olivier Verley rejects the distraction of color, but, with his cunning play of light, is able to obtain shades of gray, and very deep blacks…
Whether it be familiar territory like that of Vexin and the banks of the Oise, or more distant lands like Castilla in Spain or the Sibylline mountains in Italy, Olivier Verley constructs his photographs with the same sensitive and rigorous approach. The Musée d’Art et Histoire Louis-Senlecq’s wish to highlight artists from the area and its interest in contemporary art led to the museum’s interest in Olivier Verley’s photographs, and particularly in his landscapes.
This theme is an integral part of the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire Louis-Senlecq’s cultural and scientific project, which has a major collection of paintings of the banks of the river Oise. Already approached through the lens of painting, drawing, and printing in several temporary exhibitions, landscape captured by photography is being shown for the first time here, with the work of this photographer from Auvers-sur-Oise.
The exhibition of close to eighty photographs and the publication that accompanies it also gives an account of the major study on the landscape of French Vexin and the banks of the Oise that Olivier Verley began twenty years ago, as well as shows his interest in other types of territories and mountainous areas with a presentation of pictures taken in the Gers, Italy, and Spain.
Caroline Oliveira
Caroline Oliveira is the director of the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire Louis-Senlecq in L’Isle-Adam, France.
Olivier Verley, Dans le sens du paysage
From April 23 through September 17, 2017
Musée d’Art et d’Histoire Louis-Senlecq
31 Grande Rue
95290 L’Isle-Adam
France
https://musee.ville-isle-adam.fr/agenda-musee/olivier-verley-dans-le-sens-du-paysage
