Valérie Jouve — Corps en résistance — Jeu de Paume, Concorde — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: June 2 → September 27, 2015

Valérie Jouve’s photographic and film work is rooted in the alchemy between bodies and space, humanity and the urban landscape. Titled “bodies, Resisting”, this exhibition offers a substantial selection of works from the late 1980s up to the present day.

Born in Saint Etienne in 1964 and now living in Paris, Valérie Jouve studied anthropology before enrolling at the National School of Photography in Arles. Now a photographer and filmmaker, she is part of that generation of French artists which has moved away from the great humanist tradition without completely rejecting its fundamental concerns.

Her photographs and films draw as much on contemporary art and creative documentary as on anthropology and sociology. In their combined portrayal of people in motion and buildings, they explore physical presence in cities and ways of living in space. The classic subjects of landscape and portrait are brought together in a way that draws splendidly choreographed scenes out of the intensity of urban situations.

Valérie Jouve, Sans titre (Les Personnages avec E.K.) 1997-1998, 0 C-print — 114 x 152 x 3,5 cm © Valérie Jouve / ADAGP, Paris 2015 — Courtesy of galerie Xippas, Paris

The ambiguity and deliberate indeterminacy of her photographic compositions is underscored by her use of the designation Untitled. These open-ended bodies of images are added to by the artist over time, and each is identified by a generic subtitle in parentheses: Characters, Facades, Passers-by, The Street, Situations, Trees, and so on.

The Jeu de Paume selection covers more than twenty years of Jouve’s work. The exhibition itinerary sets up a tension between these still images and a series of films looking at the city and its margins, ranging from Grand Littoral and Traversée to the artist’s new work, Blues. Created especially for the exhibition, Blues speaks to us of the abuse of power by countries and people. Jouve went to Guatemala to film and photograph changes to the landscape induced by the practices of those the local Indians call gringos. Comprising sequences of films, photographs, texts and sounds, the work revolves around Tania Carl, a French blues singer who has opted for living in Guatemala.

Jouve has approached the presentation of “Bodies, Resisting” as if it were a musical composition, imbued with a momentum that makes the viewer a participant.