"Frederic Nauczyciel’s photographs are striking at first sight because they uncannily oscillate between familiarity and strangeness. These photographs capture the most intimate and disguised moments in everyday relationships between human beings. Free of any surreal effects, they manage to slightly distort reality and bring the audience into the realm of feelings and psyche, far beyond the world of speech. These images uncover unspoken—and most certainly unspeakable—truths that are universal to every family. But gestures and demeanors never lie."
Jean-Hubert Martin, Paris, 2010
Jean-Hubert Martin is a French art historian, curator, and exhibition curator known for creating exhibitions that called into question museological thinking and practice — “Les Magiciens de la Terre” (1989).
The reconstructions of Frédéric Nauczyciel's Demeure intime were carried out during thirty-six-hour immersions in families he met in Paris, Stockholm and Barcelona without any particular choice criteria. All scenes were replayed for the camera. Eric Chauvier imagined the accompanying anthropological fiction and gave the exhibition its title. The part of fiction contained in the story that serves as his starting point, a diptych of two photographs placed on his grandmother's sideboard, one being the reactivation of the first one several years apart, remains unresolved.
The exhibition was last shown in its entirety in Barcelona at the Palau de la Vireina in 2010.
Frédéric Nauczyciel and Eric Chauvier will therefore meet for the first time since then at a get-together organized on September 23rd at the Cité internationale des arts (details in the practical information).
Frédéric Nauczyciel (France) is a Cité internationale des arts partner artist.