The young artist and photographer Nicolas Dhervillers, represented by the SCHOOLGALLERY, was asked to realise original work on the theme of the automobile for the International Automobile Festival, which will be held from January 28 to February 2, 2014, at the Dôme des Invalides in Paris.
In Dhervillers’ previous series (Tourists, My Sentimental Archives, Hommages), this feeling was already in the air. It was evening poetry. A dusk light enveloped the forests, the mountains, the woods, the valleys, the deserts, with little people passing through them. They were anonymous images found on the internet and a few archives, or celebrities borrowed from the great masters of painting. Dhervillers offered these exiled figures , a second existence, a journey into a wild, surreal landscape.
In Road Movie, a series commissioned for the International Automobile Festival , the artist changed his actors. He invited the stars of the road, legendary cars to travel across his vast open spaces, then created fictional collages, narrative assemblies, causing temporal accidents. A DS car rolling on an arid road in the middle of nowhere. And rocks sculpted by the wind sticking out of the earth like spikes. The sky is heavy, thick. And the automobile is alone. No one is behind the wheel. The car seems to know the way, and drives on towards some unknown destiny. Its cousin, a Citroën SM is driving full speed down the main road of a valley. Behind it, a house is consumed by flames. The car is tearing away, a fugitive. As for the red Plymouth Valiant, the car from Steven Spielberg’s early cult film Duel, it finally arrived to its destination, the end of the earth. The truck that was chasing it in the film has disappeared. Gone, away. Here, there’s nothing but the vast sea and a lighthouse waiting for it. It’s the end of a long journey.
Julie Estève
EXHIBITION
Road Movie
Du 29 Janvier au 2 février
Dôme des Invalides
Paris
France
http://www.nicolasdhervillers.com
http://www.festivalautomobile.com
http://www.schoolgallery.fr
