School Gallery, Paris - 2009

Architectures Portuaires

Exhibition School Gallery, Paris 2009

 

" Portiques" photograpy

 The structural treatment of the industrial landscape in Martine Mougin’s photographs evokes a two-sided aesthetic image. In 1969, Bernd and Hella Becher said about the topography of industrial buildings: “Their aesthetic characterizes them, in that they were created with out aesthetic intent.”

Martine Mougin uses their “unintentional beauty,” an involuntary beauty that these landscapes invoke a priori. She proposes a different vision of these landscapes, reveling in a physical beauty that she perceives, imposing an aesthetic vision here where others—port workers, you, me—perhaps would see nothing, but this utilitarian zone ravages a landscape which was once natural.

 

In a second sense, she reinforces and emphasizes the structural dimension with the application of bright colors to the works. The colors do not saturate the images, but, like filters, symbolically transform them without concealing them.

 

The colors, both of the port and those enhancing the photographs, render the images all the more unusual in an industrial landscape, which we usually associate with various shades of gray and black, smoke, grease, and pollutants. But, as the artist shows, these ports are truly full of colors: red signals, blue containers, etc...

 

Critic Marie DEPARIS-YAFIL





Sources : Aucune