L’HEURE IMMOBILE. MÉTAPHYSIQUE MÉDITÉRRANÉENNE — BERNARD PLOSSU
Curated by Ricardo Vazquez and Walter Guadagnini
Produced by Hôtel des Arts – Centre d’art du Département du Var
Bernard Plossu dedicated his life to travel and photography. From Mexico to Africa, from the US to Le Havre: very few places escaped his gaze. However, the Mediterranean, this space in motion, made of strong light and sharp shadows, has often seen him hesitate. Spain has managed to hold him for a few years, in a small Andalusian village which is still very dear to him.
Through never seen before images taken in the South of France, Spain, Italy and Greece, the exhibition tells the story of the relationship between Bernard Plossu and the Mediterranean metaphysics, the same of Carrà, De Chirico, Morandi.
In his photos, the Mediterranean is made of deserted and fluctuating scenarios so mysterious in their familiar appearance to make it difficult to understand whether they are real or imaginary. In his images, the most unlikely things can suddenly happen; opposites can meet, time can change, stretch or stand still without a real reason.
It is, in actual facts, the tale of a journey, but the photographs, more than an odyssey, try to show the time in wait, the moments between two actions, two places, the passage between two worlds, two consciences. This encounter of universes, these magical combinations so dear to the surrealists, turn these mind spaces into a metaphysical world where the illusory stillness can’t hide the force of the poetical evocation.
Bernard Plossu has kept hundreds of photos in a conversation with painting, literature and metaphysics photography.
We just have to choose among these mysterious journeys, among the ones that us profanes can embark on without danger and the ones which are a little riskier, for whoever wants to look a little further away..
Building sites, warehouses, motorways, thresholds, wagons, factories, seafront, pavements become doors which let us through the looking glass, where clocks stop to made us feel the breath of time…
(text by Ricardo Vazquez)
