Galleries in Paris

The gallery is pleased to present its third solo show devoted to Julien Crépieux, who is simultaneously nominated for the Prize of the Fondation Ricard. Named Seconds after the film of that name by John Frankenheimer from 1966 in which the characters are offered a chance by a secret society to disappear and live a new life, the exhibition brings together a set of video and photographic works reflecting the major themes that characterise the work of Julien Crépieux: his taste for cinema and more generally for moving images; time slowed or suspended and memory; space and the materiality of images (in their principle of appearance and revelation, but also in their relation to perspective and depth of field); and finally his interest in language in its relationship to images.
Thanks to the Ricard Foundation, Claire Le Restif (Credac), Thibault Poutrel and ADIAF for the production of the film Vortex and to Nathalie Ergino and Magalie Meunier (IAC Villeurbanne).
Ricard Foundation Prize
Nominated for the 18th Ricard Foundation Prize, this year organised by the artist Isabelle Cornaro, who was awarded the Prize in 2010, Julien Crépieux has been invited to present his iconic work Re: wind blows up (2010) at the exhibition Paris . Recently shown in the Antonioni exhibition at the Cinémathèque Française, the work of Julien Crépieux breaks down the Italian director’s famous film Blow-Up into a hundred frames printed on paper that he makes fall into a kaleidoscopic device consisting of four mirrors assembled in a long column. The images slide slowly and chronologically, multiplying to infinity in undulating planes over the soundtrack of the film. «The movement of the cinematographic image is artificial in itself, being formed only of still pictures to which our retinal persistence gives the illusion of movement. What interests me is what happens between two images, and the time that still lies between them. ».
The exhibition Paris is presented from September 5 to October 29 at the Fondation Ricard at 12 rue Boissy d’Anglas, 75008 Paris. The award will be presented on October 21 during FIAC.
Vortex, 2016 – vidéo 16:9, 11’
The latest film by Julien Crépieux Vortex is seen as a journey inside an image, its material and the different time layers which compose it. Its starting point is the last shot of the famous shower scene from Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock: A backwards travelling shot (coupled with a light circular pan as an introduction) on the eye of the character played by Janet Leigh, dead and lying face down on the ground after attempting in a last effort to hold on to the shower curtain. This film is again built around a still image, this time obtained by a telescopic process, rather than a kaleidoscopic one as in Re: wind blows up. From the tightest shot on Janet Leigh’s eye to the widest one, the artist extracted ten frames of this legendary cinema scene, and makes a large collage by embedding images into each other. Printed on the scale of an approximately 1.50 m screen, the composite image obtained was then filmed by the artist to reproduce the slow Hitchcock camera movement. Examining the original image in its movement and in its grain, Julien Crépieux very slowly discovers it in its entirety, until revealing in the final wide shot the artist’s studio in which is set up the scene of what appears in the end as a real still life.
« Vortex, by the magnitude of proximity or distance he places himself from his subject, addresses these issues of possible distances for images, their dimensions and the material of composition. The camera becomes an archaeologist of a known image that it «hollows out», stressing its depths both in space and in time.
Untitled (and Milk), 2016 – printed silk and neon tube, varying dimensions
What we call today the «definition» of an image depends on the number of points that make it up, ie grain in photographic terms, and then the distance at which it is reproduced or perceived . The weaker its «definition», the more an image is perceived in an abstract or pictorial manner. It is this ambiguity which Julien Crépieux plays
JULIEN CREPIEUX
September 3 – September 24, 2016
Public openning on Saturday, September 3rd
2, rue Beaubourg 75004 Paris – France – www.galeriepoggi.com – office@galeriepoggi.com
GALERIE JEROME POGGI
with in the work Untitled (and Milk), a monumental digital photo 8 meters long, which the artist has printed on a thin transparent piece of silk. The reproduced image is that of a still life composed by the artist around a glass of milk, a recurring motif in the history of art and cinema that is found both in the work of Ed Ruscha for example (Various Small Fire And Milk) and in the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock. It is by bearing in mind the scene from the film Suspicion from 1941, where we see Cary Grant carrying a poisoned and luminescent glass of milk on a tray, that Julien Crépieux has imagined his light installation where its composition is lit from within by a neon tube from which it is suspended.
Cyanotypes, 2016 – cyanotypes on canvas, 80 x 120cm, single editions
The series of cyanotypes on canvas that Julien Crépieux has executed for the exhibition is linked to his large collection of movies, from which he extracted a dozen generic frames, favouring those where the title of the film stands out as a negative on a black and white image. From La Notte by Antonioni to Ivan’s Childhood by Tarkovsky, through Charulata by Satyajit Ray or Seven Samurai by Kurosawa, these legendary titles become images, losing their semantic character as we look at them to become nothing more than graphic abstractions. The cyanotype technique, an old monochrome photographic process, lends these images a ghostly character. Resulting from the use of iron salts rather than silver, its Prussian blue makes the letters float on an image that looks bottomless, itself drawn into a phenomenon of appearance and disappearance with the exceptional regeneration qualities of the cyanotype, which, in darkness, sees its colour go back to its original tone.
Untitled, 2016 – sprayed paint, varying dimensions
Implemented on two walls of the gallery, Untitled is a process-based work of Julien Crépieux materializing «projection» – literally as well as in the cinematic and mental senses of the term – a specific point of view. Sprayed with a spray gun from a fixed point in a subjective direction and duration, the painting somehow projects the gaze on to the wall facing it.
BIOGRAPHY
Graduated from School of Fine Arts of Montpellier (FR), Julien Crépieux, born in 1979, lives and works in Paris. His work was shown in several exhibitions in France, at IAC Villeurbanne, MRAC Sérigan, at Palais de Tokyo, CAPC Bordeaux, Le Plateau – Frac Ile-de-France (Elodie Royer and Yoann cur. Gourmel), Centre d’art contemporain of Quimper (cur. Marc Bembekoff ), L’espace de l’art concret in Mouans-Sartoux (cur. Paul Ardenne and Fabienne Fulchieri) and the CRAC Sète (cur. Judicaël Lavrador); and abroad at Hermes Und Der Pfau (Stuttgard, DE), South London Gallery (UK), GAMEC (Bergamo, IT), Nijny Art Center (RU), Mercer Union-Center for Contemporary Art (Toronto, CA), Godia Foundation (Barcelona, ES). His work is part of many private and public foundation (Kadist Art Foundation, Contemporary Art Museum of Bergamo, IT, Musée d’art contemporain de Nîmes – Carré d’Art, Frac Île-de-France, Frac Haute Normandie, Frac Languedoc-Rousillon, Frac Limousin, Frac PACA).