Champclause/Boltanski/Mougin - 1990

Martine Mougin

"Stacks Stories"

The series of « Stacks » presented at Wroclaw was archieved during 1988-1989.

The stak of ferns, study subject for Martine Mougin, belongs to the contryside of her childhood : the Basque -contry. The photographic capture of this item is not enough for her. Martine Mougin drops very fast the objective function of her matter to impose upon it a pictural process : combining the photographic medium with color areas; blue or yellow, exclusively. Martine Mougin follows the painter's process while extending the work of the photograph : the painting becomes a second enlightener.

Without any subjective, nor trick effects, an image appears suddenly, detached from it's original background to become a pattern of it's own.To the first impression created by the binary color relation, succeeds an interpretation truly linked to her photographic work. the image of a stack,natural element « sweped » by time becomes multiplicity.

Martine Mougin juxtaposes prints-sequence, frozen image by a close shot game on the pattern-while working on the own materiality of the image : it's the fern burnt to a cinder, the dried clod of earth, the barren stake...In turn follow one an other , the entire stack, women stack, fertility symbol, linked to the barren stake of the phallus-stack, then the warriorone, scarecrow protector of the fields, in the end, by an effect of focalisation on certain subjects, the spectator discovers a strange zone, ghostlike, theses decaying stacks, spectre-stack, skeleton-stack...

They become signs of the passing of time and of this precarious balance between life and death. they have acquired, gradually, a symbolic content, new vanities of the XXI century.

Catherine Alestchenkoff, commissary

Paris mars 1990