Nicolas Ruel — City Scape — Projet 8 secondes

Exhibition

Photography

Nicolas Ruel
City Scape — Projet 8 secondes

Past: April 28 → June 4, 2011

Seine 51 gallery presents the secound round of the “ 8 seconds ” serie on stainless steel of the canadian photographer Nicolas Ruel.

“Any urban space, from a village to a megalopolis, furnishes my work with the fictional raw materials for transfiguration.
I take a formal approach to photography, based on urban design and architecture. Structuring and disarticulating these elements is the predominant theme of my work.

I am fascinated by transitory and transitional sites-places that in their nature and function incarnate motion and metamorphosis, such as ports, terminals, docks, highways, construction sites, churches, and stadiums.

These spaces belong to a form of monumentality that when deserted inclines to material silence a vacuum in the world of things and beings.

For a number of years I have been using very long exposures that function like a movie set, condensing each photograph into a kind of 8-second micromovie.

This long exposure makes it possible to assemble key moments in a single take, analogous to the process of condensation in dreams.

Thus, in this dolly shot, I translate the actions and spectacle of the city and its residents as I follow their unceasing movement.

Through each exposure, I intensify a symbolic charge, which I then recombine in order to reverse the codes attached to the photographed real.
And because I print onto stainless steel, I need to take into account a sculptural reality, as if my work were an image being crystallized.

I photograph the city in the knowledge that the metal, like a prism, is going to change reality in its turn. So it is that the imaginary cities I inventory fall into place."

Nicolas Ruel

  • Opening Thursday, April 28, 2011 6 PM → 9 PM
Seine 51 Gallery Gallery
Map Map
06 St Germain Zoom in 06 St Germain Zoom out

51, rue de Seine

75006 Paris

T. 01 43 26 91 10

www.seine51.com

Mabillon
Saint-Germain-des-Prés

Opening hours

Tuesday – Saturday, 11 AM – 1 PM / 2:30 PM – 7:30 PM
Other times by appointment

The artist

  • Nicolas Ruel