Claudia Imbert — La famille incertaine — Marie Cini Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: October 20 → December 1, 2011

Marie Cini is pleased to present Claudia Imbert’s first solo exhibition, La famille incertaine (The Uncertain Family).

Claudia Imbert here explores the unconscious of the French family. It explores the flipside of happiness, which so often appears to be indisputable but is silently cracking before us — moments of loneliness, feelings of confinement, initial projects always postponed… In her view, each house, each space becomes a cocoon in which everyone of us seems both guard and prisoner. Here optimism is a front. The children are serious, the adult concerned, the floors clean. No drama has taken place yet. Is it to be desired? Shall a grenade be unpinned? Happiness does not exist here but as debris, only nostalgia remains but as a grimace, which would have us to believe that everything is still possible. And yet, everything seems peaceful, orderly, immutable. Let time go by and maybe hope shall be reborn. Claudia Imbert does not force anything upon us. She concentrates all the contradictions of the world within her clear-cut frames, like nets awaiting a prey in the morning light. But is joy so far away? No, it is very close. In the background overflowing with promises, in the sweetness of a glance, in a melodious object. All this sadness is just a surface. We must scratch it tirelessly. And underneath, a mirror admittedly reflects our disenchantment, but also our deep humanity.

Faced with still images: a short film projected in a loop.
It is a gaze in motion. A gaze that is intense, obsessive, tormented.
A gaze prepared to wait a thousand years for life to be restored.
This gaze is undoubtedly Claudia Imbert’s.

After ten years working in film as a director of photography, Claudia Imbert is now developing an artistic approach that connects photography and film, fixed and moving images. Her experience in cinematography is widely perceptible in her work, notably through staging. For the artist, resorting to artifice is a way to seize the right moment.
Claudia Imbert lives and works in France.