FADE OUT, 2011
Fade Out is a series of twelve silk-screened posters. The pattern is that of a canopy caught in the moment before its possible occultation and expected replacement. Playing not only metaphorically with the meaning, the image is trapped between two contradictive ideas, those of a violent erasure and an obvious exposure of the pattern in question. The only thing that corresponds to the values and the constrasts of the original photography that has served as model for the screen printing is the poster, displayed in the center. No certainty is possible. In the terms of modern optics, the recipe, used by the artist, offers a sort of variation on the problem of the visual acuity, a photographers’ obsession during the XIX century at a time of the epic struggle between painting and mechanical recording. Here, the process of erasure or ink staining predicts and anticipates the phenomenon of the spectator’s adaptation.
The artist does not reveal each step of a process one by one but instead he juxtaposes the areas of focus and blurry, in other words, the moments when the image fades away and those when it affirms itself in its own clarity. Moreover, the silver ink makes each image reversible, as spectator has an impression of looking at either a negative or a positive, depending on the point of view that he adopt. Silver ! Once again, there is an evident reference to the former method of image recording. Without being nostalgic, the artist glorifies the silver-print technique – fixation of images by disposing silver salts on film – that precedes the methods of our digital age. The image is not real unless it is materially incarnated. The series thus works exactly like a cinematic sequence, in which the operator tries to capture the good balance between the light and the depth while manipulating the camera.
Extract from press release of the exhibition Solaris at Transpalette, Bourges,
by Damien Sausset
