A “photographer without a camera”, Katrien de Blauwer uses old magazines dating from the 1960s to compose enigmatic and sensual photomontages.
Playing with the fragmentation and obliteration of the images she collects, which she doesn’t hesitate to truncate and scar with coloured pencils, she fashions snatches of narratives in which the eye likes to wander while imagination does its work… Here, a bare-back in yellow against a black rectangle; here, a mouth flush against a cloudy sky; there, another stained red above an iron curtain; there again, a truncated body buried beneath a mountainous landscape… : everything in these micro-narratives is based on ellipsis.
“Like fields and counter-fields on the same plane, the viewer takes over from the narrator to unfold the imaginary scenario “1 of these highly cinematic photomontages. As for the colour strokes she uses to enhance her images, the artist gives us a few hints: “Red is fear – yellow is hatred – blue is love. A few clues thrown like dice in a game of chance, because, in the words of Paul Auster, highlighted in the exhibition: “We are continually shaped by the forces of coincidence.”
- Charlotte Boudon, co-artistic director of Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire
@katriendeblauwer
Katrien de Blauwer. Why I fear red, love, blue (and) hate yellow”
Till December 20th
Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire
17, rue des Filles du Calvaire, Paris III
France – Paris