About —
MOMENTA x Musée d’art de Joliette
Marina Gadonneix combines documentation, simulation, and fiction to make the energy around objects visible. In her photographic series Phénomènes [Phenomena], she explores scientific models that replicate natural events by probing the theatricality of the laboratory.
Through their artificial (re)production, these phenomena (an avalanche, a tornado, lightning, and so on) literally take shape and become things—entities that we can now grasp. Enigmatic and seductive, the atmosphere created by these representations evokes the sensory rather than the rational. There are few clues to help us understand whether what is “happening” in the image is something marvelous or catastrophic. In her staged images, Gadonneix explores the notion of the elusive in relation to the intrinsic human need to measure and control what surrounds us.
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Exhibition presented by MOMENTA | Biennale de l’image and produced in collaboration with the Musée d’art de Joliette and Les Rencontres d’Arles.
Images in the banner
Untitled (Wave) #2, from the Phénomènes series, 2016, inkjet print. © Marina Gadonneix. With the kind permission of Galerie Christophe Gaillard.
Untitled (Lightning), from the Phénomènes series, 2014, inkjet print. © Marina Gadonneix. With the kind permission of Galerie Christophe Gaillard.
Copyrighted, protected works. Reproduction prohibited, all rights reserved.
Biography —
Born in1977, Paris, France.
Lives in Paris.
Solo exhibitions/screenings: Reste eVidence Black-out, Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Paris (2017); La couleur moyenne de l’univers, Le Point du Jour, Cherbourg (2016); Phénomènes, Kaune Contemporary Gallery, Cologne (2015); Après l’image, Galerie Michèle Chomette, Paris (2015); Smoke Screens, Galerie Panoptikon, Stockholm (2015).
Group exhibitions/screenings: Panorama, Ateliers de l’Institut Français — Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018); Le temps, Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Paris (2017); SoixanteDixSept Experiment, Centre photographique d’Île de France, Pontault-Combault (2017); Space Oddity, Maison des arts de Créteil, Créteil (2017); Background, Galerie Duchamp, Yvetot (2017); Entre la plume et le marteau, Centre photographique d’Île de France, Pontault-Combault (2016); Landscapes, Darmstadt Days of Photography, Darmstadt (2016).
Represented by Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Paris.
Website: marinagadonneix.com
Curatorial Text —
Marina Gadonneix combines documentation, simulation, and fiction to make the energy around objects visible. Merging abstraction and figuration, place and non-place, she examines, through images, the photographic act and its ability to capture the “event” of the real.
The exhibition Phenomena, presented in collaboration with Les Rencontres d’Arles, explores scientific models that replicate natural events by probing the theatricality of the laboratory, a place of experimentation in which the world is constantly re-created. Through their artificial (re)production, these phenomena (an avalanche, a tornado, lightning, and so on) literally take shape and become things—entities that we can now grasp.
The resulting visual compositions nevertheless leave room for mystery, for undecidability. Enigmatic and seductive, the atmosphere created by these representations evokes the sensory rather than the rational: there are few clues to help us understand whether what is “happening” in the image is something marvellous or catastrophic. In a way, the work tests the collective imaginary of scientific narratives. Gadonneix examines the human desire to intellectually appropriate abstract things and transform intangible phenomena into objects (of study). In her staged images, she explores the notion of the elusive in relation to the intrinsic human need to measure and control what surrounds us.