AUTOFOCUS
BEN - ESTHER FERRER -
MILLER LEVY - JIRI CERNICKY
GIL J WOLMAN

In the context of “Photo Saint-Germain-des-Prés”, the Galerie Lara Vincy offers a thematic project that wishes to emphasize radically different approaches to photography. Some examples that aim at underlining a discrepancy compared to the usual use made of the medium, examples chosen among the artists the gallery represents and whose approach testifies to the frequent use of that means to fix in time performance actions, bodily experiences, ephemeral sculptures or pure concept.

Starting off with the notion of travel and of dreams, the overall theme of this event, the exhibition combines original Polaroid’s by Miller Levy in the early 1980s : Les coins perdus (Lost corners), corner photos stuck directly onto the print representing utopian houses in picturesque landscapes, small corners of paradise that we can dream of and the Chewing homes, interior views of places decorated with furniture made of chewing gum that the photo immortalized; we once again find the notion of travel in Jiri Cernicky’s photo Happy End Shoes (2000), the illuminated encounter of two pairs of shoes in an airport lounge.
Since the sixties, Ben and Esther Ferrer position themselves thanks to numerous self-portraits, whether they are in Esther Ferrer’s worked over by successive fragments of colored bodies; or whether they are in Ben’s completed by a written text — calligraphed — that sometimes contradicts what we are seeing; for instance, a panel points out “this is not a photo”.
There will also be shown photos prints in separate black and white negatives by Gil J Wolman : The separatist movement with as its sole member Wolman himself, radicalizes his notion of separation started in 1977, “separation: movement that introduces a space in a surface subjected to limitations” (Wolman in Wolman résumé des chapitres précédents, 1981).
Finally, this exhibition tends to make us aware of a different way of using photography, whether it serves as a pretext to pass messages with Ben, to undertake hypnotic photomontages with cut outs of the prints providing a new set of prints with Esther Ferrer, intervening directly on the Polaroid by sticking on an outside element with Miller Levy, or else by separating in two parts negative prints highlighted on the film before being printed, a subversive and roundabout gesture in Wolman that totally hides the subject’s identity inside the portrait itself (Freud, Proust, Maria Callas, ancient Egyptian head…).

Art’s alchemy operates within these various proposals in a fusion of the message with the work, of action with the instant or else of the photo with the idea, be they vectors of an art of attitude (Ben, Esther Ferrer, Wolman) or when they invite us to dream and to a self projection (Miller Levy, Jiri Cernicky).

Translated in English by Ann Cremin, 2012