Sabine Pigalle works on portraits with a sense of play that does not exclude seriousness; on the contrary, it allows her to unhinge the visual language, the history of costumes, as well as nudity. She blends literature and cinema. She touches on Mad Love, dear to André Breton, whose usurped role as the “Pope of Surrealism,” however, she would have rightly hated.
Aware that perfection is not the world’s most sought-after model, the photographer sets out after it with a dose of dandyism. In the face of a repressive world that has a disregard for life, the photographer tries to construct a body of work that “holds up”—be it only in the margins. However, she never withdraws from the world; rather, she focuses on creating hybrid figures.
Every take is about tackling her own persistent, obsessional images which, if one attempts a visual comparison, bring to mind the robes of Dürer’s Melencolia, its folds and its furrows, while the way she moves between concealing and unveiling evokes Japanese art.
Every photograph by Sabine Pigalle is a journey to the end of the night. The artist crosses the night tethered to her own shadows and zones of light just as they upturn the classic rules of portraiture with the subtlest sense of humor.
Far from any myths (which, by the way, the artist continues to deconstruct), the photographer creates intimacy less with nudity than by veiling. She refuses the simplistic gestures of derision or provocation, which would be all too easy in an age when they have become the norm.
To sum up: Sabine Pigalle forges a lyrical, hybrid communion with her subject in a manner that is both cool and flamboyant, vulnerable and ecstatic. The heat of emotions is kept sealed in the darkness through the effect, not of false narrative modesty, but of incantation.
EXHIBITION
Sabine Pigalle, Morceaux choisis
From March 30th to May 7th, 2016
Acte2Galerie
9 rue des Arquebusiers
75003 Paris
France
http://www.acte2galerie.com
