Sharing “confined” and dormant works in workshops is the starting point of this exhibition which brings together photographers Mélissa Boucher, Silvana Reggiardo and Laure Vasconi. No theme (apparently) links the different works. However, between them emerges a combination of emotions, ideas and common reflections on the act of photography. In order to probe the volatility of the image, all three interpose screens between the gaze and the photographed surface, between the viewer and the work. Whether it is the eroticism of a fleeting gesture stopped in a flow of images by Mélissa Boucher, the intangible play of reflections on the windows of an office tower by Silvana Reggiardo, or even an indescribable sadness on unknown or famous faces, blurred by the scan of a television frame, by Laure Vasconi, each time, we remain far from the documentation of reality.
Thus, when Silvana Reggiardo, through a telephoto lens, reduces the distances to the point of losing all reference points, even more than the city, she above all captures the adornments of the light that play on a facade. She sometimes adds a one-way glass, so the reflections of the place aggregate to the image like a second skin; the confusion and distraction set in surreptitiously.
Just like Mélissa Boucher, who domesticates images from feminist pornography films by capturing them as they scroll across the surface of a screen. Desire, we see nothing, or almost nothing in this visual multiplication which transforms languid gestures and kisses into ghostly appearances. These images, which circulate confidentially, are photographed with film by Mélissa Boucher, manipulated and transformed into photograms before being presented under reflective glass. In this game, we no longer recognize the age of the photographs, while deciphering hidden desires and fantasies.
From the studio, Laure Vasconi released an excerpt from “Canal”, a series made twenty years ago. At the time she was already wondering about the economy, the political and cultural meaning of a new form of visual language inaugurated on Canal + television. Her camera then attempted to kidnap the missing part of these “new images”. Images that had to be paid for to become “clear”. It is on the apparent banality of the city and of family intimacy that today (with her latest book, L’Après jour looks at the photographer, on small gestures, traces of coercion and loneliness in urban space. No one really sees them, just as we do not dwell on the fleeting imprints of light on the shiny surfaces, recorded by Silvana Reggiardo. Finally what the three artists offer us is attention. carried out of range.
For this “Studio outing”, we will find, in one of the rooms, sketches, printed essays and dormant works, offered to visitors or collectors. The installation, here on the wall, uses the vocabulary of the book, given as a volume, and as many pages that dialogue on the theme of the appearance of an image, in other words its form, its design, its perception. For this encounter between the field of contemporary art of photography and photo-installation, modest but unique and rare objects are brought together on the “collector’s wall”, which can be taken with them. In this version, the image only takes on meaning when staged in a given space and time, that of a sneak exit from the workshops of Mélissa Boucher, Silvana Reggiardo and Laure Vasconi. I would like to thank them here for their complicity and for having placed their trust in me in this adventure, generously shared with the Regard Sud gallery.
Frederique Chapuis
Exhibition curator
Mélissa Boucher / Silvana Reggiardo / Laure Vasconi : Sortie d’Atelier
February 20 – March 27, 2021
Regard Sud Galerie
1/3 rue des Pierres Plantées
69001 Lyon
