Suzanne Lafont: Sketches
The exhibition will be a collection of different images from various corpora the artist has been working on since the early 1990s. Taken from the réserve, a collection of items specifically characterised by their momentary inactivity, the images have been selected and will be arranged in such a way as to create a new situation: the exhibition. The theatrical model will provide the framework for their reactivation. Sketches can be understood as ‘skits’ but also ‘rough outlines’ or ‘drafts’.
“A situation is dependent on the interplay of the elements”. As this quote illustrates, Suzanne Lafont’s photography has developed through montage: the work (or the exhibition or book) is an arrangement, possibly fleeting, of intermittent elements. The elements are photographic images – of different sizes and on a variety of media – and words. Her practice of montage has led her to experiment with methods as diverse as superimposition, undulation, echo, disjunction, grids and spatialisation. The process she has adopted for this exhibition is constellation. Guided by the gallery space, the theme continues with an arrangement that appears to slide, fold and unfold, inviting the visitor ‘into the wings’.
Suzanne Lafont (b.1949 in Nîmes, lives in Paris) is well known for her stylized images and theatrical narrative scenes. She turned to visual art after her literary and philosophical studies, focusing her attention on how images result from a process of cultural elaboration and construction. Her more recent work develops the fictional aspect of images, exploring the ludic potential of illusion.
Since the 1980s, Lafont has participated in numerous exhibitions worldwide, among others La photographie en France, 1950-2000, Maison européenne de la Photographie, Paris (2011); elles@centrepompidou, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2009); Street & Studio: An Urban History of Photography, Tate Modern, London (2008) and Museum Folkwang, Essen (2009); Universal Archive, Macba, Barcelona (2008); REAL. Portrait from a corporate collector of DZ Bank, Städel Museum, Frankfurt (2008); as well as documenta IX (1992) and documenta X (1997).
Solo exhibitions include Nouvelles espèces de compagnie. Roman, Galerie des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux, 2019; Situation Comedy, MUDAM, Luxembourg (2011); Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo (2005); Musée d’Art Contemporain de Marseille (1999); Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris (1992). Index was Lafont’s first collaboration with Erna Hecey Gallery in Brussels (2008). Erna Hecey presented a solo exhibition focusing on Index and Situations Comedy at Paris Photo in 2015, followed the same year by SITUATIONS, a major solo exhibition at Carée d’Art, Musée d’art contemporain, Nîmes.
