(Naked) Absence...(Blinging) Presence...(Dis) Appearance is a room, sometimes plunged into darkness, sometimes lit by a two-minute light cycle. Lights are like experiences: what I see appears “true” because it’s bathed in light and reflects itself. But sometimes light can erase, absorb, or dissolve what one sees.
Mirrors: Isn’t the silver aging of mirrors like the reflection of the clouds? As if a woman merged with the mirror after she’d looked too long at her own reflection. We look for her, only to find her amidst the clouds. Looking at oneself in a mirror shouldn’t be about finding oneself, but about taking a step back to discover how others see us what we truly look like.
Photo Exhibition: If one were always to describe the intent with which a picture was taken, to express via words or references what happened when it was shot, it would be like adding a glazed layer to a window display, blurring the framed image and disrupting the image’s inner- silence. It would give an imperative meaning, and create a misleading projection before one even encounters the image. This intellectual idea of what might have happened ‘there’ replaces or disrupts our initial sensation. It annihilates our first feelings, as an unnecessary layer onto which we glue reassuring, commonplace, or socially acceptable meanings. If one stops intellectualizing an image, one can then judge it, feel it, or live it like a self-portrait of the artist inside of which one finds his own reflection. Just like a portrait, a landscape should offer the same kind of emotion that two loving eyes express, or what two lips are about to say: “Just before / in front of the photo, I can touch a face; brush your eyelids with the palm of my hand. This sensation will always exist, but I shall not fix its shape, its shadow nor the vibration of this face into an image, after seizing it.
Working with one of the most elusive and often underappreciated elements – light – Thierry Dreyfus has explored many of its intangible facets. Following a commission by the French Ministry of Culture, Dreyfus illuminated the Grand Palais, a historical monument built last century, for the Universal Exhibition, located at the base of the Champs Elysées, bedazzling over 500,000 visitors. Additionally, through a series of vertical light beams, Dreyfus elevated the Gardens of the Chateau de Versailles and, most recently, working with a commission by the City of Paris, Dreyfus plunged the Catholic cathedral Notre Dame de Paris into darkness only to both poetically and physically enlighten it from within during the 2010 Nuit Blanche. All in all, over the past 30 years, Dreyfus has sculpted, drawn, and projected light onto prints, objects, scenographies, and historical monuments in endless innovative ways. Currently, Thierry Dreyfus is working on enlightening installations for the Montecassino convent, and the Duomo Museum in Milan.
Art director, photographer and artist since 1985, Dreyfus first started experimenting with light inside theatres and operas. Since then, Dreyfus has created some of the fashion industry’s most unique and memorable sets in Paris, Milan, London, and New York, including long-term collaborations with Helmut Lang, Dior Homme, Calvin Klein, Comme des Garçons, Jil Sander, and Proenza Schuler.
Dates
December 24–February 20
Opening Reception
December 24
7:30–10pm
Admissions
Free
Location
The Main Gallery