JEAN-FRANÇOIS RAUZIER Hyperphotos
JEAN-FRANÇOIS RAUZIER is represented exclusively in the UK and the USA by Waterhouse & Dodd.
All works may be viewed online at www.waterhousedodd.com/rauzier and are available for sale on receipt of this catalogue. Front Cover: Citadelle 1 exhibition no. 3.
JEAN-FRANÇOIS RAUZIER Hyperphotos
25th November - 18th December 2009
Selected works at Abu Dhabi Art 19th - 22nd October 2009 SCOPE Miami 2nd - 6th December 2009 Los Angeles Art Show 20th - 24th January 2010
WATERHOUSE & DODD 26 Cork Street London W1S 3ND +44 (0)20 7734 7800 info@waterhousedodd.com www.waterhousedodd.com
Foreword
We first saw the work of Jean-François Rauzier just 5 months ago. We were amazed and completely fascinated - and as art world veterans that doesn’t happen very often. We were attracted by what seemed to us a unique combination of sheer beauty, scale, technical genius and intellect. And as we are principally dealers in fine art, the way that he composed his works as if he was a painter was especially interesting. Since May that initial appeal has developed into a dedication to bring Rauzier’s work to a wider audience. Rauzier has been using a camera professionally for 39 years, but he has only worked fulltime as an artist since 2000. His many years in advertising taught him much about the technical aspects of photography, as they would to any talented person, but Rauzier uses this knowledge in a virtuoso way. His larger pieces amalgamate up to 3,500 individual images; they also integrate his deep love of learning, literature, art history and, above all, nature. Rauzier is now in his prime, with the artistic ability and experience to create works of astonishing visual appeal. We are delighted to offer his work in the gallery in what is his first solo show in the Jean-François Rauzier, 2009
This exhibition contains a representative selection of Rauzier’s oeuvre. Images and details of all available work may be viewed on our website www.waterhousedodd.com/rauzier Some prints are offered in different sizes which are noted in the catalogue entries. Other slight size variations may be available, subject to the artist’s consent. All titles are produced in just one edition of 8, regardless of size. Furthermore, each individual edition number has a unique detail added by the artist. Please contact the gallery about the availability of each edition.
UK, and to be taking them to shows in the USA in the coming months. Our thanks go to Jean-François’ friend and colleague Virginie Epry who has worked with us on this show with passion and administrative skill, and to Vyvyan Kinross for his penetrating and perceptive introduction. And of course to Jean-François Rauzier himself for creating such great new works for this exhibition and for making so much of his previous work available to us.
Ray Waterhouse November 2009
All works in the exhibition are C-Type prints, extremely high quality photographic prints. Each catalogue entry notes whether they are Diasec mounted behind UV protective plexiglass or framed.
JEAN-FRANÇOIS RAUZIER: Looking for the detail in the big picture Imagine you are looking along the length of a cold, stony beach, the winter sky streaked with a blaze of colour as the sun starts to slip beyond the horizon. On your right the sea washes up, breaking into wavelets on the stones; on your left a low line of cliff and jagged rock supports some nondescript, perhaps abandoned apartments.
The evidence of this is visible in works throughout the show. In Conference de Burano (exhibition no. 6) we are presented with an intimidating, post apocalyptic aquascape populated with ornate, empty chairs floating aimlessly amongst random debris. Until, on one of them, we see a dog perched looking helplessly out to sea. The symbolism here is redolent of politicians talking even as the world we know unravels.
You look again. And there, in the middle of your line of sight, stands a man wearing a black overcoat and hat. His face is obscured. Above and beyond him, observing from the cliff top is another solitary figure, watching the watcher. Then you look down at your feet and out along the ‘stones’ and realise that that each one is in fact an alarm clock. You are standing on a beach of alarm
tive series Les Belles Endormies, we see the pros-
clocks.
series of receding perspectives which each contain
With Laura (exhibition no. 10), part of the evocatrate figure of an attractive young woman and a another figure, both of whose motives we feel are
Your mind in freefall, you realise that the usual rules of logic have gone missing. Spatial awareness, of nearness and distance, depth and width, detail and impression are all skewed. And what you took at face value as a simple panorama is something else entirely - an infinitely crafted, hyper-real landscape inhabited by detached figures in a hidden psychodrama. The image is a puzzle, the content a paradox, the totality a beautiful assault on the senses. Welcome to the art of Jean-François Rauzier. In particular, welcome to his On Time (exhibition no. 1 and a detail illustrated right), one of 14 Hyperphotos by this pioneer of photography, installation, painting and technology assembled in this sublime exhibition. The dazzling originality of vision, strength of composition and technical virtuosity of On Time is neither accidental nor occasional. It is the systematic result of a groundbreaking marriage between art, photography and technology. It is both a methodology and a new channel of artistic expression.
open to question. And there, again, seated to our right and partially hidden is the black clad figure observing, but not part of, the action. There is an allegorical slant to these images, their perfection and lack of visible emotion or expression suggesting something viscerally disturbing at work. For everyone but the technorati who see these Hyperphotos, the question will inevitably be: how does Rauzier achieve these remarkable images? What box of magic tricks makes the scale and complexity of the images possible? And is the sheer size a kind of grandstanding, even a mask for more fundamental questioning of the achievement? The unique vision, the artistic creativity in abundance, and the skill are all Rauzier’s. The technical alchemy is provided by a variety of digital image software and an Apple Mac capable of handling his 30-40 gigabyte images. Each image that Rauzier assembles is a collage of between 600 and 3,500 individual close-up images, each taken
one by one, using a telephoto lens over a period of one to two hours. Once the entire scene is captured, Rauzier stitches them together using Photoshop, working until the naked eye can't tell where each piece of the image begins or ends. The Hyperphotos are executed in a format that can be printed as large as 30 feet by 10 feet without degrading; indeed, the definition of the images is such that potentially they could be expanded to 50 metres and still retain their quality. Rauzier is certainly not the first artist to be seeking scale by harnessing painting with the expanded possibilities afforded by technology. David Hockney is another. His Yorkshire landscape in spring, Bigger Trees Near Warter 2007, measures 15ft x 40ft and was painted on 50 separate pieces of canvas. However, Hockney’s work is more about using digital software to fit the pieces of a giant jigsaw together to achieve scale that follows the logic of the artist’s perspective. Rauzier is aiming for something different, no less than a revolution in the way we perceive the world through the camera lens and artist’s eye deployed in parallel, a means by which we can see the big picture and the close-up at the same time. Rauzier himself says: “When you are looking at a Hyperphoto, at first you think you are looking at an enlargement of a panoramic photograph. Not quite. Look more closely and you absorb a strange atmosphere that distances the viewer from the real world and sucks you into a universe of dizzying amplitude.” It is impossible to overstate the impact of these works when seen in person. The technology and process never obscure the achievement of the art itself. The compositions are executed with an extraordinary skill and eye, perhaps only possible with someone of Rauzier’s experience and sensibility as photographer and artist, and even deploying the high impact coup d’image which reveals him as the adman he was for 30 years.
The works in the show offer contrasting views of places both real and imagined. In Citadelle 1 (exhibition no. 3) we find Rauzier’s observer casting his eye over a nightmarish agglomeration of rooms, randomly planted on top of each other as they reach for a sky populated with flocks of distant, threatening birds. Like a motif from William Burroughs’ worst nightmare, this challenging product of the imagination becomes all too real as we gradually connect with the trapped inhabitants. By contrast, New York Reservoir (exhibition no. 8) offers a fish-eye, heightened view of a cityscape that we know - we’ve just never seen it like this before, either in scale, colour or sheer beauty. Rather than intimidate, it beckons and delights as we keep finding more to take in. La Rose des Vents (exhibition no. 2) finds a group of leather clad bikers, looking at the camera with nervous smiles, clutching motorbikes which are half buried in sand. A landscape of sand, scrub and thorn - no road in or out - surrounds them, whilst behind the group an abandoned building rots and decays, its signs fading and its inhabitants long gone. An air of melancholy, abetted by washed out colour, hangs over this composition. The themes that criss-cross Rauzier’s work accurately reflect the complexities and concerns of the human condition, stopping on the way to challenge the viewer’s preconceived ideas and comfortable assumptions about his or her place in the world. They offer a vision of great, even immense beauty, sometimes coupled with a melancholy and anxiety, but always challenging, always provocative, always pushing forward. Rauzier’s Hyperphotos offer us all the opportunity to take a bite, as Allen Ginsberg would have said, from a new kind of reality sandwich. Vyvyan Kinross November 2009
1 On Time Diasec mounted C-Type print 120 x 250 cm / 47.5 x 98.5 inches
When Rauzier was a child, the beach at Etretat was made of huge white rocks. Now, these have been broken by the sea into mere pebbles. “I had thought that rocks were eternal, at least for one man’s lifetime. But Time erodes everything faster than we realise. The irony is that the alarm clock, the symbol of time, fabricated infinitely like so many grains of sand, also ends up being discarded.” La roche n’est pas éternelle. Pas plus les gardiens du temps. Seule l’ombre m’indiquera l’heure, Mais il faut rester debout.
2 La Rose des Vents C-Type print, framed 120 x 330 cm / 47.5 x 130 inches
The settings in Rauzier’s hyperphotos are all recomposed, whether they are landscapes, interiors or seascapes. To help create his extraordinarily detailed and supernatural works he has built a vast image library of people, buildings, interiors, trees, skies, fields and forests. This allows him the freedom to create compositions as if he was a painter, and also to control the lighting. In La Rose des Vents he has used many photographs of a garage and bikers taken in East Germany, and of a beach close to Le Touquet in the north of France, and also shots of the sky from western Brittany. Un souffle puissant a tout dévasté Au milieu des sables balafrés, Commémorer, S'accrocher aux bribes de l'histoire.
3 Citadelle 1 Diasec mounted C-Type print 180 x 300 cm / 71 x 118 inches
This dream citadelle is an amalgamation of a multitude of images derived from a ground floor apartment in a large ‘Hôtel Particulier’ in central Paris owned by the Pozzo di Borgo family. This apartment was rented at one time by Karl Lagerfeld who controversially painted over all the gilding. Rauzier has talked about walking in these vast empty halls and feeling faint as the walls seemed to fall away and then move back, multiplying into infinity; and wondering in the twilight whether he was outside or inside, whereupon a fantasy of celebrated authors appeared to him. A key to the 60 authors represented is supplied with this work. These include Hans Christian Andersen, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, Günther Grass, Franz Kafka, Stephen King, Guy de Maupassant, Edgar Allan Poe, Philip Roth and Jules Verne.
4 Citadelle 2 Diasec mounted C-Type print 180 x 300 cm / 71 x 118 inches
In this huge advent calendar a glorious selection of Venetian, Florentine, Neapolitan and Milanese gardens are partially hidden behind the doors, and a myriad of Italian Renaissance paintings can be seen through each window. Citadelle 2 depicts the first floor of the same ‘Hôtel Particulier’ in Rue de l'Université in Paris as portrayed in catalogue no. 3 (and shows to what extent Lagerfeld had painted over the gilt decoration on the ground floor). In this exceptional work which amalgamates over 1,500 different images, Rauzier intends to portray the essential shallowness of French late 18th century decoration - like icing on a cake - by juxtaposing it with the significant subject matter and the quality of the Italian 13th and 14th century paintings which he has placed behind the windows and doors. These subjects include the Birth of Venus, mankind being expelled from the Garden of Eden, Jesus being betrayed and crucified, and of course the Day of Judgement. A key to the Italian artists whose work is represented will be included with this work. The artists include Giotto, Fra Angelico, Masaccio, Botticelli, Filippo Lippi, Uccello and Leonardo da Vinci.
5 Passage Diasec mounted C-Type print 120 x 152 cm / 47 x 60 inches
Passage is part of a series of Rauzier’s works based upon tales and legends from the Middle Ages. It seems to be a perfect and beautiful scene with the traditional elements of a fairy story: the castle, the beautiful princess, the swan. But closer inspection reveals that, like life, it is neither that simple nor idyllic. So it is a landscape filled with hidden dangers. A treacherous swamp is populated by snakes and reptiles that only reveal themselves upon minute inspection. To reach the castle and rescue the princess, the prince will have to take the ‘passage’ of the title, the route through the swamp that will entail slaying all the evil creatures. Thus Passage can be seen as a rite of passage, fighting past the inevitable problems of various stages of one’s lifetime, and as an allegory for life itself. Nul n’en viendra troubler les eaux sombres de mes rêves. Je m’y plonge avec volupté.
6 ConfĂŠrence de Burano Diasec mounted C-Type print 90 x 230 cm / 35.5 x 90.5 inches
This image is inspired by the artist’s love of Venice and the Venetian Lagoon. It can be read both as a remarkably beautiful and haunting image and one with references to Venice and the surrounding islands, such as Burano, sinking into the lagoon. For Rauzier there is also a political viewpoint, as the area around Venice is both the subject of and hosts innumerable conferences, and the floating antique chairs, symbolising empty talk and endless private conversations, will eventually sink.
7 Marée basse Diasec mounted C-Type print Available in 3 sizes 120 x 255 cm / 47.5 x 100.5 inches 100 x 212 cm / 39.5 x 83.5 inches 90 x 192 cm / 35.5 x 75.5 inches
This depicts the beach at low tide near Erquy, Brittany, while the hilltop building is The Chapel of St Michael d’Aiguilhe at Le Puy-en-Velay, Auvergne. As usual with Rauzier, there are many hundreds of images woven into the finished work. "No lens can give perfect sharpness in one photo, from as close as 12 inches up to infinity, that I can achieve by assembling thousands of photos. I want total definition, such as on a geographical map or a botanical or entomology board, where every plant or animal is exact and in its place.”
8 New York Reservoir C-Type prints, framed Tryptich 120 x 424 cm / 47.5 x 167 inches
Despite the fact that New York Reservoir is one of his most literal representations, Rauzier has used more than 1000 images to create the finished work. The only significant compositional creation is the removal in the lower left portion of a road, where it has been replaced by the wooded park. The detail is so great that one can even see people in the windows of the distant high-rise buildings beyond the river. Imaginer ce qu’ils sont, ce qu’ils font, ce qu’ils voient. Tous au même instant….
9 Erzebet from the series Les Belles Endormies C-Type print, framed Available in 2 sizes 150 x 120 cm / 59 x 47.5 inches 225 x 180 cm / 88.5 x 71 inches
In 2009 Rauzier embarked on a series of 16 works inspired by the multi-layered story ‘House of the Sleeping Beauties’ by the Japanese writer Yasunari Kawabata. This complex tale involves men visiting a remote house where girls are sedated into passivity and the guests can drink in their youth and beauty without any interaction, all the while closely watched by the lady ‘guardian’. Rauzier saw in this story, in its dreams and illusions, many echoes of the recurrent themes of his own work. Of course there is the obvious parallel between the photographer and his inert model, and between the protagonist of the novel, Eguchi, and the Belles Endormies. But Rauzier has recreated scenes from Kawabata’s very Japanese story using a completely Western background and specifically French cultural and decorative references.
10 Laura from the series Les Belles Endormies Diasec mounted C-Type print 150 x 120 cm / 59 x 47.5 inches
The technique of Hyperphoto (Rauzier’s photographic conception) also echoes the written lines of Kawabata where he describes Eguchi looking at one of the Belle Endormie part by part - the nape of the neck, the shoulder, the breast, the hip - and assembling each precise detail in his mind in a similar way to how Rauzier delights in creating the phenomenal details in his works. In the novel Eguchi proceeds to invite us to discover the memory of a skin texture, a finger, or a mouth, in a way that Hyperphoto is specifically designed to allow a viewer to do.
11 Sunha from the series Les Belles Endormies Diasec mounted C-Type print 150 x 120 cm / 59 x 47.5 inches
In Les Belles Endormies Rauzier explores the theme of sleep as a doorway to mystery, to dreams and to lyricism. In this strange artificial world of Rauzier’s creation there are especial resonances and contradictions: in presence and absence; in love and death; in the intimacy that exists between an artist and his model and in the distance that separates them; in the desire for beauty and its inaccessibility.
12 Maï from the series Les Belles Endormies C-Type print, framed 150 x 120 cm / 59 x 47.5 inches
Recreating the basic elements of the story ‘House of the Sleeping Beauties’ by Yasunari Kawabata in a French chateau, Rauzier uses it to express his preoccupation with reflections and levels of perception, and with the photographer’s perennial ‘separateness’. Whilst the viewer may marvel at the lavish compositions and the quite extraordinary detail in Les Belles Endormies, Rauzier always retains a perfect sense of the beauty of the whole. In this dedication to achieving harmony in each composition in the series, and also in the repeated placement of the girls in the foreground, the artist was influenced by Balthus.
13 Racines C-Type print, framed 180 x 200 cm / 71 x 79 inches
This work symbolises the artist’s family tree, one with a distinctly artistic aspect. The young girl is holding a self-portrait of Rauzier’s maternal great-grandfather, the realist painter Jules-Alexis Muenier. For Rauzier there is a symmetry between branches and roots, which is stressed in the reflection: “As in life and death, past and future, the tree is a symbol of an individual person, a family, indeed entire humanity. This is why we love them so much. Childhood precedes and pursues us. When the horizon stretches out in a circle, yesterday resonates in tomorrow.”
14 Coquelicots Diasec mounted C-Type print 120 x 180 cm / 47.5 x 71 inches
"I photograph a field with a certain direct light, but then I can choose a completely different sky, creating if I wish a surrealistic stormy atmosphere. It's like creating a movie set. For me ‘Coquelicots’ represents a future world, when all the birds will be in a cage and only the planes will fly in the sky.”
Ex-exhibition The 9 images shown on the following pages will not be on view during the exhibition but are a selection of further available works by Jean-François Rauzier.
Les Belles Endormies 3 further examples from the series of 16 (please also see exhibition nos 9 - 12) clockwise from top right: Anne Gaëlle Diasec mounted C-Type print 150 x 120 cm / 59 x 47.5 inches Marjolaine Diasec mounted C-Type print 150 x 120 cm / 59 x 47.5 inches Marie Diasec mounted C-Type print 150 x 120 cm / 59 x 47.5 inches
Dernières nouvelles Diasec mounted C-Type print 130 x 370 cm / 47 x 146 inches
Farandole Diasec mounted C-Type print 120 x 225 cm / 47 x 89 inches
Omaha Beach Diasec mounted C-Type print Available in 2 sizes 100 x 358 cm / 39.5 x 141 inches 90 x 322 cm / 35 x 126 inches
Voyages Extraordinaires Diasec mounted C-Type print 180 x 300 cm / 71 x 118 inches
Cranach’s Dream Diasec mounted C-Type print Available in 2 sizes 100 x 322 cm / 39 x 126 inches 90 x 290 cm / 35 x 113 inches
Bibliothèque Idéale 2 Diasec mounted C-Type print 147 x 180 cm / 58 x 118 inches
JEAN-FRANÇOIS RAUZIER Born in 1952 Education and early professional career
Fairs & Events: (cont)
Scientific studies, followed by a degree at the French Photographic School, Ecole Nationale Louis Lumière
2006
Mois de la Photo, Ormesson sur Marne International Photography Encounters, Arles Artexpo, Jacob Javits Center, New York
1970 - 2000 Advertising Photographer Awards: Forthcoming Exhibitions: 2010 2009
Solo show at the MAM 30, Paris Seoul International Photography Festival
2009 2008
APPF Award - Architecture category Arcimboldo Award La Nuit du Livre Award Screenings Award at Up-date Berlin Digigraphie Award
Selected Solo Exhibitions:
2006 2005
2009
Acquisitions:
2008
2007
MMOMA, Moscow Belles Endormies L'Art en Direct, Paris Waterhouse & Dodd, London Galerie Embiricos, Paris Galerie Bailly, Paris Mois de la Photo, Gallery Basia Embiricos, Paris Photography Parcours Parisien, Paris Galerie Cosmos, Paris EDF Foundation, Toulouse Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Geneva Dassault Aviation, Saint-Cloud L'Art en Direct, Paris Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles
2009 2008
2007
Cognac Martell, Russia Carlyle Group - Close Brothers - Transimmeuble, Paris Vegas Trading, Caracas Lutz - D'Orlando, Geneva Barinboim, Tel Aviv Kenzo George V - Catela, Paris
2006
Lamballe Hospital, Lille CIVC Partners, Chicago Vauban Clinic, Livry Gargan Hollander van der Mey, The Hague 9 Acquisitions by Heineken, “Culture Bière,” Paris
Fairs & Events:
Lectures
2010 2009
2008 2006 2004
2007
Los Angeles Art Show, USA with Waterhouse and Dodd Art Hamptons, USA with Waterhouse and Dodd SCOPE Miami, USA with Waterhouse and Dodd Abu Dhabi Art, UAE with Waterhouse & Dodd Art Athina, Athens Musée du Montparnasse, Paris Microsoft showroom, Paris Photokina, Cologne Transphotographiques, Lille Art Basel, Miami Pixels Festival, guest of honour, Alençon
2006
Dassault Aviation, Paris Photokina, Cologne
2008
Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris International Photography Encounters, Arles National Superior School of Beaux Arts, Paris
Publications 2009 2008 2007
2006
Connaissance des Arts, Paris Co6aka, Russian magazine, Moscaw Articles in Le Photographe, Paris Match, Paris Articles in Il Fotografo, Il Manifesto, Click, Milan Art Business News, Rangefinder, Digital Photo Pro, USA Adobe Magazine Hyperphoto Monograph - limited edition of 150, Paris
Catalogue written and published by Waterhouse & Dodd © 2009 Designed by Jamie Anderson Photographs © Jean-François Rauzier Introduction by Vyvyan Kinross © 2009 All rights reserved No part of this catalogue may be reproduced in any media, or transmitted by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher Printed by ArtQuarters Press, London