It is through the discovery of vintage black and white school photographs that Valentine Fournier began to collect anonymous images from the 1920’s through the 1950’s. These holiday souvenirs, family portraits and other everyday scenes all share the war in the background, whether far or near.
Marked by the universe of codes, playfulness and tragedy of Georges Perec, she studied for her Interior Architecture degree the elements of space in the writer’s work. From this work on décor, Valentine Fournier began to develop in 2000 an art on miniature staging: photographs are cut out to extract their characters that are then staged in a minimalist space of glass boxes or handmade notebooks, they become protagonists of a new story.
Every detail of this uncluttered universe (chairs, doors, ladders, color keys…) is the key element of a poetic narrative that usually presents a dose of gravity. Starting off from a precise theme, like the circus or work, the artist enjoys declining surrealist playlets, ironic or filled with dark humor having a tender and critical point of view on the fate of these black and white characters bearing a never before seen emotional thickness. These past ghosts are familiar to us, and they touch us in our heart with their metaphoric postures, in which figures of absence, the awaiting, or the encounter are drawn out.
Emmanuelle Fructus
Valentine Fournier presents through July 2nd 2011 at the Gallery Un livre-une image her last series called “Le Repas”.
Galerie Un livre-une image
17, rue Alexandre Dumas
75 011 Paris
Monday-Saturday, 2-7pm
