In this exhibition there is a selection of Karine Maussiere's polaroids at Galleria Gallerati in Rome. These are minimalist, the individual pictures combine to produce a sense of the infinite. Her working practice is about walking so as to absorb the landscape around her.
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| Photo by Karine Maussiere courtesy of http://www.karinemaussiere.com/ |
The polaroids, which are small and pale, give you a sense of the calm and sublime. In the exhibition in Rome at Galleria Gallerati titled Hyberborees, Water, and Mountains, Flowers the horizon is seen as an open space, the surrounding landscape to be taken in, nature as sublime, intangibly calm. Sometimes nature envelops, sometimes - in the case of the mountain peaks - it makes you giddy due to their height.
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Photo by Karine Maussiere courtesy of http://www.karinemaussiere.com/
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Photography here is used as detractive, in a zen way to actually accentuate the beauty of the landscape. She combines this with the walking to create gaps between the images. These gaps represent a fraction of displacement. The images are then reassembled to give a high of the subliminal landscape. The images together make you think of a log book, a diary of her journey across the landscape, creating a story, a narrative, through reassembled images. Taking a photograph as an act of truth but then reassembling the images makes you think of the relation between memory and fiction.
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| Photo by Karine Maussiere courtesy of http://www.karinemaussiere.com/ |
In the walk Le Temps en Friches, part of her residency in Instres in 2013, where she criss-crossed the GR2013 on the Western territory of the sea of Berre, she observes the changes taking place in this territory. This area experienced its economy based on traditional activities such as managing the salt marshes, and soda plants; this has been replaced over time by an industrial economy.
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| Photo by Karine Maussiere courtesy of http://www.karinemaussiere.com/ |
Through her polaroids she observes the buildings left behind. With any one polaroid she does not show the whole building but selects a section of the building and combines the polaroids together to form one picture. She is interested in architectural heritage. Her walks are a journey of discovery. She uses the small format of Instant Mini and enjoys the instantaneous process of the polaroid which she feels accentuates the ghostly appearance of the buildings she encounters. The images, put together and carefully framed, create a process which reinforces the presentation of the unsympathetic impact on the landscape of the derelict buildings, which in fact are creating a wasteland. The detritus of civilisation.
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| Photo by Karine Maussiere courtesy of http://www.karinemaussiere.com/ |
We might compare this with the work of Francis Alys (as both artists use walking in their practice), a conceptual Belgian artist, where he walked the streets of London, a busy urban environment, and took pictures showing a collection of neighbourhoods and a personal view of the city. His walks are transformational; the alien surroundings are turned into a space tailored to human dimensions, he maps the city through his walks. A walk is a complete action in itself and his walk changes the space. He is influenced by the Flaneurs and the Situationist and their free flowing approach. He uses photography to document the ephemeral. First the performance, then the photograph, a document that will continue the initial work inside the gallery, basically a photographic documentation of the original action. Like for example in Los Zapatos Magneticos 1994 see pic. below where he was walking the streets of Mexico City with magnetic shoes and collecting coins along the way, the shoes represented recycling and they are a reflection on consumerism, the attraction of consumerism.
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| Francis Alys photo courtesy of Pinterest |
Or for example his other work titled Paradox of Praxis 1 1997 see pic. below. In the photographs he is seen rolling a block of ice along the street for 6 or 7 hours till it melts, mimicking the work of the labourers in the city who spend most of their time pulling and pushing carts. The final result in both cases is the same, nothing to show for it because the ice has disappeared. Walking in this sense is a form of resistance as in our contemporary society all our technology and life is based on speed. Walking is immediate and anybody can do it, there is nothing consumerist about it.
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| Francis Alys courtesy of Pinterest |
He is a story teller. In other photographs you see him from afar or from behind. Another time he stood still in the middle of a square until a crowd formed around him, people dash through the cityscape not really noticing their surroundings, but some of them stopped and engaged with him, the still figure in the middle of the square, and then he left. This shows that the engagement to other people in his work is important. His work is not fixed in one place, he has walked through several cities including London, Mexico City, Sao Paolo, Jerusalem and Copenhagen. He enacted the walks in different parts of London with a 5 year project for Artangel in 2005 observing the everyday, the inhabitants' daily rituals. The work came under the title of 7 Walks, where he observed and engaged in everyday life. His action creates something from nothing. Performing his own futility and insignificance he creates a story. In one we see a photograph of him playing with a drumstick on the railings on a West London House see pic. below. another critique on the capitalist wealthy society obsessed with speed and achievement.
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| Francys Alys photo courtesy of Pinterest |
There is organisation in this work unlike the Flanuers walks. He said to have been overwhelmed by the immensity of the city of London, the combination of old traditional ceremonies, like the changing of the guards, with technology and modern buildings, titled Guards 2004-2005 see pic. below. He uses a counter productive approach for example that of tapping the drumstick against the railing. He observed the increasing homogenisation of London and positioned himself as an actor, creating scenarios. See website: francisalys.com
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| Photo by Francis Alys courtesy of Pinterest |
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