Launch of the exhibition’s eponymous book on its final day, in the presence of the artist, Saturday 25 May at 6pm.
In Nouvelles Photographies du soir, Julien Carreyn offers a vertical and horizontal reading of his images, presenting a series of framed photographs – some of which were taken in the bookshop itself – and his work on books and fanzines.
AN INTIMATE AND PORTABLE CINEMA
“Dreams take place in our heads, yet they somehow seem so distant. Sometimes, when we appear in them, they acquire a sense of realness. But curiously enough, we also see them occurring “before our very eyes”. They manifest themselves as successions of moving images or fleeting glimpses. Leafing through Julien Carreyn’s books, I find that same quality, that of a dreamlike device, marked by a certain melancholy: an intimate, transportable cinema.
With its imposing, two-dimensional nature, the book could even be put up on display. But unlike a photograph, the book requires a physical relationship with those who choose to take an interest in it. Once in the hands of the reader, the book becomes linked to the body and immediately becomes an intimate object. The feel of the paper – both smooth and rough – offers additional substance to the materialization of the memory. As we turn the pages, Julien Carreyn’s books come to life like a freeze-frame camera, telling the story of a place, its hidden lives, its ghosts and, when nudes appear, its repressed space. In this way, Julien Carreyn’s work becomes “souvenir matter”, which emerges from the depths of the unconscious.
Almost always following the same production model, Julien Carreyn’s books feature one photo per page, centered and printed on one or both sides of the page. Most of the time, they take the format of a notebook, or of the fanzine model. Every book comprises a cycle of images, each taken in a given place, at a specific time. The titles chosen by the artist specify the name of the place in which the shots were taken, and sometimes even the temporality: Les citrons du Tarn, The Nishimura Week-End or Le moulin des Ribes. The atmospheric finish of the photos and polaroids, printed in color or in black and white, remains uniform throughout the book. Whether they are gardens, trees, street corners, interiors, space-dwelling objects, small paintings or nude bodies posing and then stepping out of the picture frame, the scenes captured in these various locations are slightly blurred, bathed in a faint light that at times tends towards darkness. Of course, the photograph itself is a tool of memory, but the characteristics of the polaroid itself, low in contrast and small in size, intensify on the printed paper the feeling of an intimate, past moment – in other words, a moment belonging to the realm of personal remembrance.
What is our most tangible connection with “souvenir matter”, if not the memory made material by the photograph and, a fortiori, by the printing of these images in a book? This process, combined with the exceptional quality of Julien Carreyn’s photographs, makes the stratification of the memory of places visible. On one hand, the book solidifies the memory, giving it substance, while on the other, as the pages are turned, the images blurred by memory seem to disappear. For the artist, the book appears as a means of containing and even gathering memory – in the head, but also in the hands, like a transportable cinema, or a “suitcase box” of memory. As banal as it is mysterious, it is a bit like the view of an ordinary country landscape that passes in front of you during a train trip: there, for a moment, you perceive the many lives that may have crossed paths.”
Oriane Durand
On this occasion, the artist will unveil his latest book, Voyage à Kastelorizo, published by Néro.
