Robert Polidori — Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris
The Karsten Greve Gallery presents Présences, an exhibition by Robert Polidori, the renowned Canadian photographer celebrated for his exploration of memory through his meticulous documentation of restoration sites.
From Versailles to Pripyat, via Beirut and New Orleans, his images reveal the haunting beauty of places marked by history and decay. Through his masterful handling of light and detail, Polidori transforms ruins into powerful vessels of memory._
Behind the gilded surfaces and within the hollows of materials, Polidori’s lens captures the grain of time and the subtle traces of those junctions in the visible that art so often conceals. Upturned canvases, weathered materials—this close examination of detail exudes a quiet charm, giving the passage of time a fundamental, almost sacred, role. Through the precision of his gaze and the care in his rendering, the textures of layered matter and the soft allure of organic fabrics, wounded by their excess of paint, come alive. Unlike ruins, these remnants suggest the promise of a greatness yet to come.
We are drawn, almost involuntarily, into this poetry of detail, where familiar interiors reflect our own private spaces, while simultaneously holding the distance of masterpieces and gilded opulence. Yet again, in their kinship with ruins—marked by the damage of humidity—this detailed magic leads us into the spell of color. Luxury and grandeur are muffled under the gaze that captures the stems that hold them, the frames that enclose them, the colors that slip away… ultimately emphasizing the closeness between beauty and our own ruins, the abandoned ones that continue to inhabit our memories.
“Ruins are often more beautiful than the whole building; they suggest what it once was, and invite dreams of what it might have been.” Chateaubriand in words, Polidori in vision—the thick silence of dust resonates as a promise of rebirth, both past and yet to come.
Robert Polidori Exhibition, Presences — From April 12 to May 24, 2025 — Karsten Greve Gallery, 5 Rue Debelleyme, 75003 Paris — Tuesday to Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
