Anne Pharel invites us into the forest, her forest. The photographer is somewhat the paparazzi of trees and their branches. She captures them in their splendor and beauty. The light plays, or rather, she plays with the light. The four seasons, the decomposed barrenness of the tall groves, where has the alder king gone?
A child asks us. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is it Mendelssohn or Shakespeare, of course, it’s both. Nature awakens, spring is a blooming, summer crushes colors, shapes, and perspectives, autumn sets the place ablaze and the fire radiates in the wood where the child still looks for the alder king, finally in winter, the branches are stripped bare and let their white hair, ice diamonds, fall to the ground.
We understand that we are in a forest unlike any other, there are magical image boxes, there are three, and the oak grove set aflame by autumn sleeps in the second box, frozen by winter. Anne Pharel, poetess, explains her work in the third: “To celebrate the last, blinding gleams of day….”
This text with trees as a backdrop might be written on a leaf carried away by the wind. A bare panel questions us, and the artist explains that it is interchangeable. There are five views, like the five senses, five landscapes like five forests, depending on your mood, the weather, the climate, or the seasons, you can hang one of the five views on this panel, which are placed on a wooden stand.
The mysteries of the night gradually invade the place, the child has finally found the alder king, step by step the forest has approached, Brocéliande or just a small wood. A river continues its course, the mist rises, the photos are alive, we seem to hear the sounds of nature and we wish to stay in this landscape, this paradise captured by the photographer, Sub Noctem, thus the night is born, thus the land of Oz takes shape, the alder king, Shakespeare, Mendelssohn, and the first measures of A Midsummer Night’s Dream resonate deep within our soul.
The Depardieu Gallery invites us on this journey to the land of beauty and purity, Anne Pharel until October 18, 2014.
Thierry Jan
