At the Charles Nègre Photography Museum, a selection of Gilles Pourtier’s works is highlighted until November 22.
Graduating from the Arles School in 2009, this regional artist works in Marseille. He has been exhibited at the FRAC in Marseille (the Sept Off annually invites a Southern Region artist who is also a sculptor and painter) and bases his work on reality while questioning the perspective we have on photography.
His practice aims to be honest, light, without staging, in his discourse and photography. A gallery of portraits immediately captures our attention. The artist focuses on small details and is sensitive to the people he encounters on the street, notably during a Carnival in Martinique. He is also interested in objects of modernity, materials, and textures that can reveal unexpected images. The frames or supports are noteworthy, deliberately unpretentious, sometimes reminiscent of a photocopier with the photogenic textures of the paper to keep the photographic medium flexible and adaptable. He questions the way it is displayed to evoke a feeling. It gives the impression of being in the studio with works in their raw state.
His past as a gymnast of a certain level allows him to rework, scratch the photographic medium, engraving silhouettes over original photos. A final series presents scans of folded papers. He questions with which medium to photograph: scan, based on scanning or photography. Using the bulletproof glass of a bank, very thick, which he collected after the passage of the yellow vests in Marseille, he applies the technique of the photogram: placing objects under an enlarger and projecting them directly onto paper, a highly photographic process with meaningful implications. Another series shows us collapsing barns, leading us to the theme of foundation; he puts in perspective the structures of these buildings as the foundations of photography: the prints wear out, the buildings too. Finally, Polaroids are also exhibited. The exhibition is titled “If I look hard enough into the setting sun.”
The Sept Off is also at 109, with an exhibition curator, Julien Griffaud, from the Nice-based Super Issue Collective, invited to choose both international and local artists: 250 m² of exhibition space, works 5 to 6 meters high along the walls. The exhibition is titled “Bifurcations” and deals with reworked photography intended to make us smile or even disturb us. Long-time partner Vence invites two artists, Patrick Tourneboeuf, a photographer from a well-known French collective, Tendance Floue, and Laurent Gontier, a cartographer and visual artist. They worked on the city of Berlin to produce an accordion book, Leporello, 42 cm high and nearly 8.80 meters long. This rare book will be visible at the Basse Fontaine Gallery in Vence along with larger prints of this Leporello. The Nice gallery Uni-vers-photo, another partner, also exhibits Maxime Michelet and Tim Aspert, who have explored the queer and LGBT universe.
Four young photographers are also exhibited at the Caisse d’Epargne Masséna, a historical partner. This year, the theme for submissions was to account for one’s personal story or to follow someone else’s. A prize will be awarded as every year. A presentation of the photo workshops in schools will take place at Camille Chrétien’s bookstore in the Port district, the Illustrated Workshops: an edition this year of 300 copies, photos of their neighborhood in Ariane taken with disposable cameras.
The organizers of these events, Yowen Albizu-Devier and Orphée Grisvard-Pontieux, have taken over from the two founders Robert Matthey and Jean-Claude Fraicher after working with them since the 16th edition. It is the 23rd edition this year. The concept of Image Satellite evokes a view from above, in the era of drones, an image traversing the entire city, a kind of cartography.
Roland Haugade
