09. 03. 2016 – 23. 04. 2016
The images that Michel Dambrine offers us are akin to strange, imaginary landscapes over which floats the shadow of man. Although everything in this world is necessarily ephemeral, it is a matter here of objects and scenes whose existence is visibly precarious, temporary.
In the vernacular of photography, the poster is often a bearer of signs, interacting with its immediate environment. Dambrine’s torn poster is an entity in itself, like Brassai’s graffiti or Aaron Siskind’s cracked paint. His posters resemble collages, or rather décollages, creations of the elements and of time, in which fragments of faces are marooned, helpless. A storm, a gust of wind, an absent or wilful hand, might well upset the fragile equilibrium of these discoveries. Yet more ephemeral are the plays of sunlight, clearly transitory. The parking photographs, with their intense, blinding shafts of light, are chilling geometric landscapes worthy of Dante …Abandon all hope, you who enter here…
The undulating landscapes of fabrics, illuminated by ribbons of light which resemble streaks of lightning, are equally dramatic, but these images are inviting rather than menacing due to their downy setting.
The works presented are drawn from three series of photographs, Lacérés (1980-1984), Chambres (begun in 1984), and Parkings (1988).