Since June 9, 11 exhibitions can be found in the museums of the City of Nice. Among them, at the Musée de la Photographie Charles Nègre, are “Roses from my garden” and “Anthèses”.
“Roses from my garden” is a series of about forty works presented by the photographer Nick Knight at the Musée de la Photographie Charles Nègre as part of the Nice Arts Biennale.
Filtering helps the artist find something he didn’t see during the photoshoot. He offers us his own perception of the image. Nick Knight stages the roses from his garden. He is an image creator with a keen sense of beauty. He elevates the roses to express his emotions, his feelings. Imbued with the fleeting life and decay of the flower, his works seek to show what he loves in what is in front of him, no matter what he photographs. He proceeded similarly with portraits of artists like Kate Moss or Brad Pitt, photographs of a landscape, or cars. Here, the melancholic beauty references the Dutch and Flemish still lifes of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Initially photographed in natural light via his iPhone, he works on his images with software using artificial intelligence. He then fills the space between the pixels to emphasize the pictorial qualities of the flowers. These are digital representations of original photos, which he retouches with a Chinagraph pencil to work on the sharpness of the image edge, in works enlarged between 1.8m and 2.4m that sit between painting and photography. The exhibition curator is Bex Cassie, Associate Director of Nick Knight’s Archive, on view until September 22.
Also part of the Biennale dedicated to flowers, artist Catherine Larré presents “Anthèses”. Named after the Greek word anthesis, flowering, she experiments with the blossoming and withering of flowers by diverting the subject. Indeed, she immerses us in a kind of collection of images that she cuts, alters, superimposes, or suspends before photographing them in a construction with fragile and subtle nuances that plunge us into reverie, softness, and wonder, but also into deeper themes like disappearance and reappearance, transformation, renewal, or perpetuation. It often involves close-up shots of children’s lower faces, mouths offered in harmony with the flowers they contain. The transcended reality takes us back to Perrault’s tales, the land of fairies, but also the breath of the soul as well as the last breath. Elsewhere, Catherine Larré assumes the posture of a painter to use brushes on photographic supports before making new shots. A profusion of efflorescence that is reminiscent of pictorialist artists’ images from the early 20th century or impressionist landscapes. The influence of 17th-century Dutch painting where the bouquet is a vanity recalls the allegory of the passage of time, a mystical reflection despite the dreaminess and fluidity of the images.
Do not miss this exhibition at the Musée de la Photographie Charles Nègre, created in collaboration with Pinault Collection and the Galerie Réjane Louin, until September 11.
ROLAND HAUGADES
