Anne Deguelle
Galerie Anne Barrault, Paris
Through December 2
“Paris vue de ma fenętre 1992-2000” is a work-in-progress that French artist Anne Deguelle has been developing for eight years, and constitutes a series of identically framed photographs taken from the window of her studio. It forms neither reportage nor, given its limited perspective, a dispassionate documentary of the evolution of a particular quarter of Paris.
Rather, this is an everyday record of the relationship between the studio space, understood as a physical extension of Deguelle’s mind, and the urban world, related via a process of transformation, which concludes with the building of a children’s play area. These large-scale photos are hung sequentially along the gallery walls at quite a low height, as if the visitor is also looking out of the artist’s study window.
The effect is particular: it isn’t the scene itself that attracts our attention, but the slow process by which the building work, seen at each successive stage, is completed. The end result, however, is rather deluding, because it depicts only a common trace of the modern city. All this – and herein lies the series’ most significant implication – can be read as a sort of disenchanted, ironic metaphor for the artist’s work and her illusions of transforming reality with creativity.
In other words, by looking outwards, Deguelle reflects on what could happen in her studio, on how her artwork might also have to fall in with certain standards. The children’s play area forces children to play in a controlled way – following the rules imposed by its safeness and marked boundaries. And the same can be said of the spatial rules applying to the far more complex “game” of art.
So we find ourselves before a work that is only seemingly minimalist in appearance – a detached photo-record of an urban mini-event. In reality, the content and aesthetic implications are much subtler and more sophisticated. Deguelle reveals herself to be constantly searching for aesthetic contemplation, which lies somewhere on the border between objective observation and introspective intimacy.
Francesco Poli
Translation by Rosalind Furness
