Following the impetus given by Bienvenue Art Fair, the Lily Robert Gallery and the Cité internationale des arts are collaborating on a new project by inviting Maya Rochat, artist represented by the gallery, and Cyril Porchet, artist in residence, to invest the exhibition spaces of Cité internationale des arts' Galerie. To be discovered from 3 to 11 November 2018 (opening on 2 November, 6pm).
Both graduates of ECAL, they showcase their approach to the field of photography through their workshops and pictorial research: open and powerful installations where light becomes painting, negative painting, canvas paper, etc.
Maya Rochat has the ability to carry her visitor into the excavations of a complete, three-dimensional and experimental photography practice. Initiated several years ago, the Living in a Painting cycle develops organically, depending on the places the artist visits and the institutions she is invited to attend. As she was able to do at the Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Toulouse - Les Abattoirs and at the Tate Modern in London, she produces live painting projections over her own images. These creations summon, in a bath of bloody psychedelic colours, a multitude of mediums: photography, painting, video, etc. With this cycle — confronting images with their materiality and that of the world - Maya Rochat creates a visual language of contamination that speaks to us as much about the psychophrenicity of the continuous flow of images as it does about the recollection that is to be perceived in abstraction. By intervening several times on images she superimposes, Maya Rochat builds a world of reverie that amuses itself with the frenzy of their circulation by stopping on fragments that have become iconic.
For The Shape of Light: 100 Years of Photography and Abstract Art - Simon Baker’s latest exhibition at the Tate Modern (now director of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris) - Maya Rochat developed in the space an experiential form of photography. It was in conjunction with the exhibition that she held Living in a Painting, a visual and sound performance she produced with the artist Buvette. In a vast space, the images hung from the ceiling to the floor, like banners. Using the overhead projector, the artist manipulated photographs — reservoirs of a reality — of mineral, desertic, argillaceous and polluted landscapes.... By applying a liquid to the transparent and luminous surface of the projector, the images are activated; an oozing and iconoclastic abstraction that evokes the chemistry of destruction.
Supported by the Lily Robert Gallery and as an extension of her project at the Tate, Maya Rochat is working at the Cité internationale des arts to once again combine media. This multi-media and performative work will then gain its meaning during a full month dedicated to photography in Paris.
Graduated of ECAL in Lausanne (Switzerland) and exhibited in various museums and galleries (including the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris and the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich), Cyril Porchet opens himself to experimentation and reveals a new chapter of his work for this exhibition. Recycling among others the negatives of his series on baroque churches (Vertigo, 20011-2012), he approaches the image with an idea of reconversion. Currently in residence at the Cité internationale des arts, he is developing a research project on the photographic medium based on offensive images of abundantly ornamented ceilings. Taking a more sculptural dimension, he creates photographic images without a camera and reveals the workings of a protocol that leaves a lot of room for chance. To do this, Cyril Porchet locks himself in a darkroom and subjects the photosensitive paper to several forms of chemical accidents, contortions or light projections. Thus, in an autarkic re-reading, the artist subjugates his own work and engages in a new perception of photography as a matrix and matter.