"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 collected images, which she does not hesitate to truncate and slash with colored pencil, she shapes fragments of stories into which the eye loves to plunge, while the imagination does its work… There, a bare back crossed out in yellow against a black rectangle; here, a mouth emerging from a cloudy sky; there, another stained with red surmounted by an iron curtain; there again, a truncated body buried under a mountainous landscape…: everything in these micro-stories proceeds from ellipsis.
"Like reverse shots brought together on the same plane, the viewer takes over from the narrator to unfold the scenario." 1 The imaginative quality of these highly cinematic photomontages is striking. As for the touches of color with which she enhances her images, the artist offers some clues: "Red represents fear – yellow represents hate – blue represents love." A few clues thrown like dice in games of chance, because, according to Paul Auster's formula highlighted in the exhibition: "We are continually shaped by the forces of coincidence."
- Charlotte Boudon, co-artistic director of the Les Filles du Calvaire gallery
@katriendeblauwer
“Katrin de Blauwer. Why I fear red, love blue (and) hate yellow”
The Daughters of Calvary Gallery
17, rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, Paris 3e
Until December 20, 2023
France paris