Géraldine Cario — Réparation — Laure Roynette Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: December 3, 2015 → January 30, 2016

The Laure Roynette Gallery extends Géraldine Cario’s solo show , « Repair »  until 30th January

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« Géraldine Cario, you’re work on the notion of memory, trace, time, absence, loss ?

They are central themes to my work. Similarities have been made between my work and the work of Boltanski, whose work I greatly admire. But mine is different. To all these main themes I had the idea of repair. I do not consider them as an end in themselves. I’m working on memory to prepare for the futur, prepare for wounds to cure them. I’m trying to question our point of view, to change perspectives. Living with my artworks is easy because they always convey a movement towards the future, a vital force.

It seems boring to avoid these subjects rather than to face them. It’s a serene war, an initiatory path which is inscribed in reality in order to transform it.

Moreover, the word « repair » will be the title of my next solo show. »

 — Interview of Géraldine Cario by Caroline Clavier for Côté Paris, october 2015

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As Marc Lambron wrote, Géraldine Cario works is «Crystallizations, shards, enigmas, effects of absence. Presented here are objects whose arrangement is testimony to an intention: we can see them, decipher them, even touch them. Confronting them, we are alive. They are gathered up due to the contingency of their unforeseen durability, survivors of attics, discount stores, odds and ends — alluvium of the past suddenly given another look. They had a use, a destination. But time has transformed them into relics; into questions. See “Memory Box”. Cameras from the 1930s-1945s are assembled as if on an anatomical chart. Lens, chromed boxes, focusing wheels that will never activate another roll of film again. In the past, a finger pressed the shutter release, the silver salts of the film captured a mote of light.

Bodies were imprinted onto a surface. At the time of developing, familiar faces were fixed on paper. Nobody can say where these pictures have gone. But the destiny of such vestiges is to survive men: lost images, intact focal points. Was it in Paris, Berlin, or Rimini? What luminance existed there? secrets? love stories? We will never know. From these boxes emanates the double certainty of existence — beings passed by — and of disappearance — they have since been lost in the labyrinth of time.(…) These works are acts of restitution, headstones of pain formed by absence and gratitude. (…) Géraldine Cario works to the point where we can imagine summoning beauties long since vanished up. She convokes engulfment and exhumation, damnation and grace .» Marc Lambron