- How do you capture the moment before everything is decided, revealed and imposed as definitive, on paper, in memory, in the depths of the heart? For several years now, visual artist Lisa Sartorio has been trying to extend this decisive moment, so that it becomes a “moment of stories”. Décoractif, the exhibition of his photographic work currently on show at Galerie Binôme, in the heart of Paris’s Marais district, is the fruit of a long and singular personal quest. It’s an invitation to take a step to the side, at the risk of “moving away from oneself”.
Panoramic intimacy.
A beach. A late afternoon blue sky. Horizon line cut by a pole. White houses reminiscent of seaside villages. On the ground, a triangle is traced out, the branch of a star that fell there by chance? In the foreground on the right, women, one with her head down, the other turning towards her, and further back a man watching them. What are they doing? What are they waiting for?
When you look at someone, the way they pose in space, there’s something in their posture that reveals them, that tells the story of their life,
explains Lisa Sartorio, who drew her inspiration from cinema to create this series entitled
Suspension. In Michelangelo Antonioni’s early films, the posture of the characters reveals bodies in a state of expectation and fatigue, as if they were at the end of a story, at the moment when everything has been said. This is a very beautiful limit.
To stage this limit, the artist sought to create a tracking effect that prolongs this moment of “the end of a world”. In cinema, the image is integrated within a succession of images, she stresses, I wanted to create images that show this space-time within a single image. And to bring out the fiction in this recomposed reality, the artist has not hesitated to superimpose images, as here, in this old hotel in Bourboule, awaiting reconstruction, a former place of passage whose rooms with torn tapestries bear witness to a bygone era. By taking snippets from this reality, Lisa Sartorio succeeds in recomposing a space that incorporates circular movement.
The last room on the right leads to the room at the back on the left,
she explains,
It’s a loop,
giving the image a feeling of a suspended moment. And always the same question: what are all these people doing, as if left to their own devices?
The beginnings of a story.
O
e need the fake to tell the story,
confides Lisa Sartorio. A false narrative? Doesn’t this willingness to counter photgraphic moments and prolong them by recomposing reality conceal a quest for the self? My background is in sculpture, which led me to photography. What interested me in sculpture was the idea of movement, even though it’s not a medium that’s specific to movement. What interested me was the skin, the surface, the things that could give rise to movement around sculpture. . From these full and empty spaces, Lisa Sartorio has created a series of itineraries. And when you think of paths, you think of narratives. I took photos. And I realized that between each photo there was an interesting space, and that putting these photos next to each other would tell a story. Since I’m creating a narrative with images, what would be interesting is to create a notion of displacement and time. I began to create images in which moments of life could be found in these images… Thus, cor Lisa Sartorio, everything is part of a perpetual movement of transformation. It’s as if she’s searching for the reason behind beings and things, with the desire to get to the heart of the matter, and perhaps to come closer to what Goethe evoked: ” the rarest form secretly guards the primitive form.”
Décoractif
disconnect.
A decisive stage in his work: insertion into reality. It was interesting to confront myself with the practice of the instantaneous, to confront myself with an image that is not related to other images, confides Lisa Sartorio, to explain his most recent series of photographic works, aptly named after the exhibition: Décoractif. Portraits of men and women interacting with an animal in an aseptic setting: the showroom of a major kitchen and bathroom company, located not far from the Gare de Lyon. In these places, desire and fantasy come to the fore. What’s strange is that we depersonalize these places so that we can project ourselves into them. That’s always fascinated me.
As in the
Suspension
the characters are in postures that reveal who they are and allow viewers to project themselves.
We stayed several days in the showroom in the middle of the day, under the watchful eye of visitors. I tried to integrate their gaze into the shooting. Results: she creates a “moment of disconnection”. Between f iction and reality, it’s up to each of us to make our own story. In this way, Lisa Sartorio offers viewers the possibility of a true self-examination. To be experienced…
Décoractifs,
an exhibition of Lisa Sartorio’s photographic work running until June 16 at Galerie Binôme – France.
www.galeriebinome.com
Andfrom August 24 to October 20, 2012, Galerie L’R du Cormoran in Bornes-Les-Fontaines.
by Odile Woesland – May 24, 2012
Cette publication est également disponible en : Français (French)
