Two women, a photographer and a painter, share their passions and their worlds with us.
The first, Martine Barrat, left France in June 1968, a whole era, and went to the United States, settling in New York. Harlem and the world of boxing are what made her famous.
Black and white photos are offered for our discovery and curiosity: a wedding, play, the street, a whole world in which one must immerse to understand it, and the photographer provides us with the keys.
The second, Eli Chrysidou, presents paintings whose interest, apart from their artistic value, is rooted in being the works of an artist also involved in the culture of the city of Thessaloniki, which is twinned with Nice.
The two other artists are a sculptor and a painter
Maurizio Del Piano is Italian and presents us with five sculptures. Rocks, stones, they are bent, eroded by the wind, and rolled upon the shore.
They are pure and sleek lines, ethereal and airy. Sospiro marble from the quarry used by Michelangelo. Stones from Bergamo, granite, and limestone. Everything is finely chiseled, barely touched by the artist—was time the sculptor?
We will look at a pebble rolled by the waves with different eyes—perhaps the artist was inspired by this abstract notion of time whose length or brevity we measure according to our expectations or whims. Try to enlarge a digital photo infinitely.
In a way, this is what Jean Paul Ducarteron offers in his intoxication of the real. Enlarged pixels give us the detail, the thousand times enlarged details of a face, a landscape, or, but whatever the subject, the goal is to go from the infinitely small to the infinitely large. Acrylic paintings or watercolors become baroque works where colors dance. What do we see? A face, an eye, a forest, or… It’s up to you to decide.
The intoxication of the real, a debate on intoxication inviting dreams or imagination, and the real plunging us into raw reality. Enlarged pixels are the dream, reducing them would bring us back to earth. Jean Paul Ducarteron invites us to escape the heavy constraints of reality, to elude into a land of Oz accessible to all.
He has given us the key, enlarge your digital photos to infinity, start from the infinitely small to reach the infinitely large, where perhaps the secret of the big bang lies. An exhibition visible at the Galerie Depardieu until February 27.
Thierry Jan
