Alexeï Vassiliev — Hieronymus — Sator Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: April 10 → May 23, 2015

Les vernissages d’avril 2015 Découvrez notre sélection de vernissages d’expositions du mois d'avril 2015.

From his first photographic works in 2002 that dealt with daily reality transformed and enhanced by the artist, Alexeï Vassiliev has been in a dialectical relationship with painting. In a subtle equilibrium that he defines as “the precise blur,” Alexeï Vassiliev creates ambiguous works, registering on the border of painting and photography.

His series of evanescent portraits Des-Apparitions(2002-2004), Troubled Moments (2004-2006) or 2052 (2006-2007) are part of this questioning. In 2009-2010, the series Z31-10/12 emerged as an extension of this problem, as a total fusion of photographic and pictorial genres, like the emergence of a new genre. In his series BZ-T2/RC-108 in 2012, the technique of preciseblurring remains the basis of his work. But when the color composes Des-Apparitions or Troubled Moments (like blue, yellow, red or gray grounds), it is the movement at the heart of “Z31-10/12” that structures the work. In BZ-T2/RC-108, this time it is light on which the series is based and built.

This new series Hieronymus (2015) is based on the same artistic technique as for his previous work: to sublimate a trivial reality with precise blurring. These new photographs were taken during an animated public event. A place suffused with artificial and sometimes raw light. As if plunged into a state of excitement, ecstatic joy or dull anguish, evanescent bodies, faded faces, wandering or motionless figures dressed in shimmering colors or dark suits are the actors. Some photographs emanate a sense of profound disarray or soft melancholy. Others, however, fascinate and seduce with their troubled character full of mystery and intrigue.

Hieronymus is rooted in the pictorial work of Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516). The photographs are revealed gradually as a tribute to the paintings of the humanist Renaissance artist. One thus finds an imagery close to a medieval bestiary, the singular mysticism of the art of Hieronymus Bosch. The parallel between the two worlds, classic and contemporary on one hand, pictorial and photographic on the other, generates a sense of disorder and fascination. Starting with an anonymous space, part of an ordinary dailiness and based on the mechanisms of passage and movement, Alexeï Vassiliev creates a theater of the soul in which each of his characters embodies the intimate wealth of raw human emotions, deep and concealed. Like the damned in Bosch’s paintings, we are as if swept away by the intoxication of this whirlwind while the fate of Man seems to be at stake in each photograph.