This week I've visited UnRepresented by Approche, An independent salon dedicated to artists who experiment the photographic medium. It is thanks to Approche that I discovered by passion for experimental darkroom processes. When I visited the fair last November I was transfixed by the variety of artworks and techniques. Until then, I had no idea that photographs could be made, not just taken. Going back to one of their salons was refreshing and stimulating. Today I can recognise almost all the techniques used by the artists to create their works. There is so much I still need to learn, but this experience made me feel a little more confident in my newly found practice.
I also discovered a new art space in Paris, Topographie de l'art. I lived not far from here a few years back and I never knew it was there, hidden in a small discrete alley in the Marais. What I loved about this space is not just the gallery, but the mindset behind it. It was founded in 2001 by an art collective and an art historian, every few months they independently organise exhibitions with different curators and artist around a contemporary theme. It was so much more free and contemprary that all the fancy galleries in the neighbourhood. The current exhibition is called "Les forms du temps" (The forms of time): "Time has fascinated humans since eternity. While it represents an intimate and familiar reality, felt even in the flesh, time is also a source of anxiety: it eludes us and reminds us of our own finitude. Saint Augustine perfectly expressed this paradoxical and elusive nature of time in his famous quote: "What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know; but if I wish to explain it to someone who asks, I do not know anymore." The exhibition The Forms of Time, rather than offering answers, explores the enigmatic nature of time by bringing together twelve artists whose experimental and poetic approaches give it shape, considering it in its complexity and many variations: measured time, suspended time, reversed time, captured time, cosmic time, historical time... In this age of accelerated time, the exhibition seeks to subvert speed and invites the visitor to slow down, favoring a time for observation, reflection, and reverie."
Domitille d'Orgeval, Curator
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