On the occasion of the gallery’s tenth anniversary, Sit Down has organized a collective exhibition entitled FLASH! It has also released a limited anniversary edition of 50 boxed sets containing ten prints selected among the gallery’s exhibition invitation cards over the past 10 years.
Where does the light shine from?
From an overexposed body the stark detail of which pulls anatomy toward an abstraction that was not obvious at the beginning ? Or perhaps it shines through nocturnal visions that emit a luminosity that pierces the darkness and, like a beacon, guides us through the signs of urban semantics? Or yet it comes from those sunbathed landscapes that caress the motif like an impressionist painting and stretch into a broad spectrum over a nature still speechless and calm.
The Sit Down gallery decided to celebrate its tenth anniversary by adopting the theme of bedazzlement. This is a notion intrinsic to the photographic medium, if there ever was one, because writing with light often appears in the image in the form of a flash, like an aura, more or less distinct. Over a dozen photographers have been brought together under the sign of glitter. Whether it’s a matter of light unfurled through the shades of gray across Robert McCabe’s landscapes, or of shimmering reflections in Myriam Richard’s radiant strands of hair, the image is always shining. Yet, admittedly, where the optical phenomenon is fleeting, the effect is not always total. Bedazzlement may be a thin shaft of light thrust through a break in the curtains into the intimacy of the bodies, as in Richard Schroeder, or light secretly filtered through the tent canvas, as in Agnès Propeck. For it is only when light is tucked into the shadow that it becomes illumination. As the final messenger, it is a mirage that reinforce the profound darkness of the desert, a breakthrough in the darkness of the worlds of Alisa Resnik.
Whether bedazzlement is the origin of a fascination or the cause of sudden blindness, as suggested, for example, in a portrait by Camilla Pongiglione in which the glare obliterates the face, we are in any case looking at a sampling of contemporary photography. It is photography in all its forms, whether from the perspective of the genres represented or the techniques employed: from gelatin silver prints to inkjet prints and progressing to the mixed media of Salvatore Puglia, or from the perspective of the subject: from the nude to the landscape, from night shots to a polished mise-en-scène, as in the work of Dolph Kessler who, with his highly ambiguous and highly ironic Art Fairs Revisited, raises anew the question of spectatorship.
To be able to take the time to sit down and discover—this is the guiding principle, which has accompanied the gallery director Françoise Bornstein throughout the years she devoted to supporting contemporary photography. And while she is driven by the desire to share her passion for the medium, she satisfies it by supporting artists working in diverse styles, and specifically young photographers. For example, she has decided to present the recent work of Aurore Bagarry or Camilla Pongiglione, and she represents the photographers Giorgia Fiorio, Robert McCabe, and Alisa Resnik in France. Moreover, in 2011, the Sit Down gallery hosted Tom Wood’s first solo exhibition in France, in response to which the New Yorker critic Vince Aletti wrote that it made Martin Parr’s work look “formalist.” Joining these artists are Sacha Van Dorssen or Jérôme Brézillon, to cite just a couple more, who are part of this astonishing menagerie, who, we hope, will continue to cast light upon the future faces of photography.
EXHIBITION
FLASH !
Collective Exhibition : Anton, Aurore Bagarry, Geoffroy de Boismenu, Jérôme Brézillon, François Delebecque, Giorgia Fiorio, Flore, Dolph Kessler, Jean-Gabriel Lopez, Robert McCabe, Yan Morvan, Isabelle Nori, Camilla Pongiglione, Agnès Propeck, Salvatore Puglia, Alisa Resnik, Myriam Richard, Richard Schroeder, Sacha Van Dorssen, Laure Vasconi et Tom Wood.
From January 7th to February 6th, 2016
4, rue Sainte-Anastase
75003 paris
France
http://www.sitdown.fr
