Bruno Serralongue
14 Sep - 21 Oct 2012
BRUNO SERRALONGUE
Histoires des avant-dernières luttes
14 September - 21 October 2012
Bruno Serralongue’s new solo show at Air de Paris presents a selection of photographs from his recent series: South Sudan 2011, on the official commemoration of the country’s independence; Kosovo 2009, still in preparation, on the construction of a new country in Europe; and Florange 2012, the working title for a series on the industrial dispute at Arcelor Mittal in France.
Serralongue subverts both the procedures of conceptual photography – revealing the complexity of the real more than exhausting its forms – and a certain dematerialisation at work in contemporary art. Triggering a reversal of the usual state of affairs, he renders visible things which otherwise would be no more than media prompts. Despite the overt construction of his images, however, his intention is neither simply formal or even visible. His way of seeing focuses very much on the veritable historical nature of the events he covers, on the contingency of events which are not self-contained but rather, as he puts it, "endless constructions of possible conflicts via the resolution of the preceding ones."
Here he borrows and tweaks the title of Siegfried Kracauer’s unfinished historical writings, History: The Last Things Before The Last, in images that reveal the full complexity of things and their history: things that are paradoxically intangible in that they reference the endlessly postponed end of history.
Bruno Serralongue was born in Châtellerault in 1968. He lives and works in Paris, and since 2004 has been teaching at the Geneva University of Art and Design. Since completing his studies at the National School of Photography in Arles and Villa Arson in Nice in the 1990s, he has produced a uniquely important body of work that has been exhibited in France and abroad, most recently at the San Francisco Art Institute. He has also had retrospectives at WIELS in Brussels, the Jeu de Paume in Paris, and La Verreina Image Centre in Barcelona. His work is part of many private and public collections, including the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Tate Modern in London, the Fotomuseum in Winterthur, the Centre Pompidou and the Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration, Paris. His latest series South Sudan is on show at this year’s Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles. Monographs on his work have been published by Presses du Réel (2002 and 2011) JRP/Ringier (2011).
Histoires des avant-dernières luttes
14 September - 21 October 2012
Bruno Serralongue’s new solo show at Air de Paris presents a selection of photographs from his recent series: South Sudan 2011, on the official commemoration of the country’s independence; Kosovo 2009, still in preparation, on the construction of a new country in Europe; and Florange 2012, the working title for a series on the industrial dispute at Arcelor Mittal in France.
Serralongue subverts both the procedures of conceptual photography – revealing the complexity of the real more than exhausting its forms – and a certain dematerialisation at work in contemporary art. Triggering a reversal of the usual state of affairs, he renders visible things which otherwise would be no more than media prompts. Despite the overt construction of his images, however, his intention is neither simply formal or even visible. His way of seeing focuses very much on the veritable historical nature of the events he covers, on the contingency of events which are not self-contained but rather, as he puts it, "endless constructions of possible conflicts via the resolution of the preceding ones."
Here he borrows and tweaks the title of Siegfried Kracauer’s unfinished historical writings, History: The Last Things Before The Last, in images that reveal the full complexity of things and their history: things that are paradoxically intangible in that they reference the endlessly postponed end of history.
Bruno Serralongue was born in Châtellerault in 1968. He lives and works in Paris, and since 2004 has been teaching at the Geneva University of Art and Design. Since completing his studies at the National School of Photography in Arles and Villa Arson in Nice in the 1990s, he has produced a uniquely important body of work that has been exhibited in France and abroad, most recently at the San Francisco Art Institute. He has also had retrospectives at WIELS in Brussels, the Jeu de Paume in Paris, and La Verreina Image Centre in Barcelona. His work is part of many private and public collections, including the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Tate Modern in London, the Fotomuseum in Winterthur, the Centre Pompidou and the Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration, Paris. His latest series South Sudan is on show at this year’s Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles. Monographs on his work have been published by Presses du Réel (2002 and 2011) JRP/Ringier (2011).