France

Constance Nouvel

When speaking of her method, Constance Nouvel employs a statement that sheds a perfect light on her enterprise: « I choose subjects that, by analogy, can combine different spaces: the photographed, photography and the photographic. » She follows through on this wide program with a constantly renewed rigorousness and inspiration. Her work does not explore specific subjects or iconographic repertoires nor does it evidence particularly favored themes or spaces that need to be systematically explored. What it does is provide an analysis of what the medium of photography, so widely used, can still be today. Thus she has decided to examine the philology of the photographic: its history, its artifices, and its technical and semantic practices.
To do so, the artist creates installation and three-dimensional dispositifs in subtle spatial settings where photography often captures the subject. They allow her to insert the critical dimension, the strategic distance, and the subterfuges that are inherent to her work, and that are underscored by the constant presence of a frame...
All her images are infused with a particular grace and sensitiveness that is not averse to the realms of imagination and dream, particularly through
the recurring usage of the landscape. But it is a trap: by pretending to show us the poetic and aloof universe of her images, Constance Nouvel actually forces us to a sudden awareness that gives us no choice but to succumb to the irresistible charm that these images hold over us, and
within which we find ourselves confined.

Henry-Claude Cousseau

Represented artists

Guest artists