Paris Photo International Photography Fair
November 8-12, 2017
at the Grand Palais, stand A 01
Continuing the gallery's work with artists, last November MELANIE RIO FLUENCY participated in the PARIS PHOTO fair for the 8th consecutive year. For the 2017 edition we presented a solo show by photographer Edgar Martins under the nave of the Grand Palais.
The Siloquies and Soliloquies on Death, Life and Other Interludesseries was created during a period of research at the National Institute of Forensic Medicine and Criminological Sciences (INMLCF) in Portugal. Over a period of three years, Edgar Martins took more than a thousand photographs and scanned over three thousand negatives from the Institute's extraordinary collection. A significant number of these images represent forensic evidence, including weapons and objects used in crimes or suicides, farewell notes, letters and activities related to the work of the forensic pathologist. In addition to these photographs, Edgar Martins has selected images from his archival corpus and produced new images, conceived as visual, narrative and conceptual counterpoints. The project rests precisely on this balance between images, imagination and imagery related to death and remains, as an interstitial domain, a parenthesis between art and non-art, past and present, reality and fiction.
Founded on the relationship between archival documents and images that seek to explore their speculative and fictional potential, Siloquies and Soliloquies on Death, Life and Other Interludes highlights the tensions and paradoxes associated with the definition and representation of death in Western society, and more specifically of violent death. In parallel, the project questions the decisive yet profoundly paradoxical role that photography - with its epistemological, aesthetic and ethical implications - has played in the perception and understanding of death itself.
In this sense, Siloquies and Soliloquies on Death, Life and Other Interludes also seeks to extend Jacques Derrida's concept of Destinerrance to photography. Destinerrance combines the notions of destination and destiny with those of error or wandering. Every missive, every letter, suggests Derrida in La Carte Postale, runs the risk of ending up in the wrong place, of being misinterpreted, of reaching the wrong addressee, because it has to use a repeatable language, and consequently the context of any statement cannot ultimately be exhaustively defined. For Martins, a photograph is like a dead letter, stuck in the dead letter office, no return to sender possible, recipient unknown at this address, due to its potential for detachment from its author, displacement and post-mortem meaning. Ultimately, photography belongs not to the truth, but to the destiny it produces.
This work marks a significant transition in Edgar Martins' artistic approach. It encompasses a broader and more diversified set of artistic processes - photography, appropriations, projections, installations, texts, sound - and reveals the artist's growing interest in a less literal and more hybrid practice of photography and visual experience.
FROM NOVEMBER 8 TO 12, 2017 ON STAND A1 AT THE GRAND PALAIS.
Continuing the gallery's work with artists, last November MELANIE RIO FLUENCY participated in the PARIS PHOTO fair for the 8th consecutive year. For the 2017 edition we presented a solo show by photographer Edgar Martins under the nave of the Grand Palais.
The Siloquies and Soliloquies on Death, Life and Other Interludesseries was created during a period of research at the National Institute of Forensic Medicine and Criminological Sciences (INMLCF) in Portugal. Over a period of three years, Edgar Martins took more than a thousand photographs and scanned over three thousand negatives from the Institute's extraordinary collection. A significant number of these images represent forensic evidence, including weapons and objects used in crimes or suicides, farewell notes, letters and activities related to the work of the forensic pathologist. In addition to these photographs, Edgar Martins has selected images from his archival corpus and produced new images, conceived as visual, narrative and conceptual counterpoints. The project rests precisely on this balance between images, imagination and imagery related to death and remains, as an interstitial domain, a parenthesis between art and non-art, past and present, reality and fiction.
Founded on the relationship between archival documents and images that seek to explore their speculative and fictional potential, Siloquies and Soliloquies on Death, Life and Other Interludes highlights the tensions and paradoxes associated with the definition and representation of death in Western society, and more specifically of violent death. In parallel, the project questions the decisive yet profoundly paradoxical role that photography - with its epistemological, aesthetic and ethical implications - has played in the perception and understanding of death itself.
In this sense, Siloquies and Soliloquies on Death, Life and Other Interludes also seeks to extend Jacques Derrida's concept of Destinerrance to photography. Destinerrance combines the notions of destination and destiny with those of error or wandering. Every missive, every letter, suggests Derrida in La Carte Postale, runs the risk of ending up in the wrong place, of being misinterpreted, of reaching the wrong addressee, because it has to use a repeatable language, and consequently the context of any statement cannot ultimately be exhaustively defined. For Martins, a photograph is like a dead letter, stuck in the dead letter office, no return to sender possible, recipient unknown at this address, due to its potential for detachment from its author, displacement and post-mortem meaning. Ultimately, photography belongs not to the truth, but to the destiny it produces.
This work marks a significant transition in Edgar Martins' artistic approach. It encompasses a broader and more diversified set of artistic processes - photography, appropriations, projections, installations, texts, sound - and reveals the artist's growing interest in a less literal and more hybrid practice of photography and visual experience.
FROM NOVEMBER 8 TO 12 ON STAND A1
AT THE GRAND PALAIS.
MELANIE RIO FLUENCY works with the following photographers:
Philippe Chancel, Franck Gérard, Rune Guneriussen, Edgar Martins, Jean-Claude Pondevie, Silvana Reggiardo, Ambroise Tézenas, Patrick Tourneboeuf.