Stories of places and spaces, bodies and ties
Each photograph hides multiple stories, those which lie at the origin of the image, those which can refer to it, but also those which are constructed from it. The photograph is thus not just a recording of the real at a given moment, but increasingly a construct of realities and fictions that feed our imagination.
And there are a thousand ways of telling a story, of describing a situation, of evoking a place or making a body speak. Since the 1980s, photography has gone beyond its capacity as a recording mechanism. The artist-photographer explores other registers of the image; like a painter or a sculptor he explores the power of matter and form. By opening its field to other artistic expressions such as literature, theatre, cinema or dance, the photograph succeeds in bringing together the photographic and the artistic. That is the case for the female artists selected for this second Arendt House exhibition.
With her series “Carnet d’A”, Anne-Lise Broyer is inspired by her reading, by stories told which she takes as the basis for collections of associated images. These new constellations tell new stories in their turn. Here, the series serves as a device contributing to the renewal of the narrative nature of the whole.
The series of Catherine Poncin often take the form of diptychs or triptychs created from photographs which she re-photographs. This is the case with the series “Entr’actes” which shows two images that are reactivated in a new dramaturgical configuration.
Katrin de Blauwer does not take photographs, but rather makes photographs in the form of collages using photographs from magazines and newspapers that she collects. She appropriates photographs of personalities which she cuts out in ways that remove any specific background, aiming to share receptiveness with the viewer.
Corinne Mercadier, with her sensitivity as a plastic artist, loves photographing indeterminate space criss-crossed by enigmatic silhouettes, flying objects that draw arabesques in the sky. In her series “Suite d’Arles”, she reinterprets the town poetically, the photographic and artistic act allowing her to see it in a different manner, to see, as she says, “the memory of stones stirred up by weightlessness”.
While gesture seems to fill the voids of Mercadier’s images, the photographs of Claudia Huidobro bring us face to face with the limits of the body and space in precarious situations and fragile places. By focussing on her fragmented body or making reference to Bellmer’s dolls, in the series “Tout contre” she transgresses the genre of the self-portrait.
The fragmented body, but also the challenged body finds a special place in the work of Isabel Muñoz. The power of movement and the aesthetic quality of her almost abstract photographs of whirling dervishes bear witness to this dynamism that characterises all her work.
The six women artists brought together by this exhibition, which privileges works in black and white, have an organic and dynamic vision of the photograph. Each in her own way, they create images into which we can project ourselves by pursuing the potential narrative thread that each image unleashes.
Paul di Felice
41A avenue J.F. Kennedy L-2082 Luxembourg Luxembourg DD/MM/YYYY trueStories of places and spaces, bodies and ties
Each photograph hides multiple stories, those which lie at the origin of the image, those which can refer to it, but also those which are constructed from it. The photograph is thus not just a recording of the real at a given moment, but increasingly a construct of realities and fictions that feed our imagination.
And there are a thousand ways of telling a story, of describing a situation, of evoking a place or making a body speak. Since the 1980s, photography has gone beyond its capacity as a recording mechanism. The artist-photographer explores other registers of the image; like a painter or a sculptor he explores the power of matter and form. By opening its field to other artistic expressions such as literature, theatre, cinema or dance, the photograph succeeds in bringing together the photographic and the artistic. That is the case for the female artists selected for this second Arendt House exhibition.
With her series “Carnet d’A”, Anne-Lise Broyer is inspired by her reading, by stories told which she takes as the basis for collections of associated images. These new constellations tell new stories in their turn. Here, the series serves as a device contributing to the renewal of the narrative nature of the whole.
The series of Catherine Poncin often take the form of diptychs or triptychs created from photographs which she re-photographs. This is the case with the series “Entr’actes” which shows two images that are reactivated in a new dramaturgical configuration.
Katrin de Blauwer does not take photographs, but rather makes photographs in the form of collages using photographs from magazines and newspapers that she collects. She appropriates photographs of personalities which she cuts out in ways that remove any specific background, aiming to share receptiveness with the viewer.
Corinne Mercadier, with her sensitivity as a plastic artist, loves photographing indeterminate space criss-crossed by enigmatic silhouettes, flying objects that draw arabesques in the sky. In her series “Suite d’Arles”, she reinterprets the town poetically, the photographic and artistic act allowing her to see it in a different manner, to see, as she says, “the memory of stones stirred up by weightlessness”.
While gesture seems to fill the voids of Mercadier’s images, the photographs of Claudia Huidobro bring us face to face with the limits of the body and space in precarious situations and fragile places. By focussing on her fragmented body or making reference to Bellmer’s dolls, in the series “Tout contre” she transgresses the genre of the self-portrait.
The fragmented body, but also the challenged body finds a special place in the work of Isabel Muñoz. The power of movement and the aesthetic quality of her almost abstract photographs of whirling dervishes bear witness to this dynamism that characterises all her work.
The six women artists brought together by this exhibition, which privileges works in black and white, have an organic and dynamic vision of the photograph. Each in her own way, they create images into which we can project ourselves by pursuing the potential narrative thread that each image unleashes.
Paul di Felice
L-2082 Luxembourg, Luxembourg