PARIS Adam McEwen

——— Die Welt ist Schön (The World Is Beautiful), Albert Renger-Patzsch’s landmark book of photos published in 1928, owes much of its importance to the critical reactions it provoked. Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin denounced the idealism of the title, even though it was chosen by the publisher and not the photographer, who would have preferred Die Dinge (Things). In reinstating the latter title for this show, the Jeu de Paume does him justice and foregrounds the coherence of a body of documentary work whose aim was an objective perception of the world and an affirmation of the medium’s realist essence. If Renger-Patzsch’s subjects and methods changed, the basic premises did not. Indeed, he could make the same image of a snow-covered pine tree in 1926 and twenty-five years later. He started out photographing living plants but soon turned to industrial installations, motivated by the then widespread affinity for analogies between natural and technological forms. Instead of sticking with close-ups, he began to do landscapes in order to show their transformations, and, after the war, reconnect with nature. The show also includes many obviously commissioned pieces, scientific and industrial assignments like his close-ups of plants from the 1920s and the disassembled parts in the 1960s. Renger-Patzsch made no distinction between his commercial and artistic work, as if he knew what New Objectivity owed to functional photography.

Translation, L-S Torgoff Galerie Art : Concept / 13 octobre - 18 novembre 2017 ——— This British artist seems to have a personal connection with anxietyproducing situations and catastrophes, especially the sinking of the Titanic. It’s related to his family background—his great-grandfather was among the victims. That disaster at sea is part of our collective imagination, and among its particularities is that we always think about it in black and white. The liner went down at night, in total darkness, and color photography hadn’t been invented yet. That particular mode of perception marks Adam McEwen’s images of it. He prints them either in graphite or with a phosphorescent pigment on Grafoil. The ambience is always nocturnal, accentuated by the support he uses, cellulose sponges, a difficult medium that blurs the precise details of the photo.This might be said to correspond to the fuzziness of memory, except for the accessories some images are decked out with, generating a distancing effect or even a provocation. Thus this work based on a major disaster has a bit of an anecdotal feeling to it, and McEwen’s associations seem incongruous. Instead of the somewhat metaphorical icebergs, some people might prefer his more contemporary scenes like the aftermath of an airplane crash and Manhattan’s Hudson Tunnel. There’s no historic dimension to the feeling of danger or catastrophe. His version of reality is made all the more distanced by the use of ambiguous colors, as if all this were just a nightmare, like the Titanic once was, before the nostalgia set in.

Translation, L-S Torgoff L’Anglais McEwen semble entretenir un lien privilégié avec les situations anxiogènes ou les catastrophes, notamment celle du Titanic. Celle-ci est en quelque sorte inscrite dans son héritage familial, puisque son arrièregrand-père comptait parmi les victimes du naufrage. Cette catastrophe maritime fait partie de notre imaginaire collectif, dans lequel elle a la particularité de s’inscrire en noir et blanc : elle s’est passée de nuit, dans une profonde obscurité et la photographie couleur n’existait pas. Ce ressenti particulier transparaît dans les images d’Adam McEwen ; il les traite soit au graphite, soit avec un pigment phosphorescent sur du grafoil. L’ambiance nocturne est de mise, accentuée par le support utilisé : des plaques d’éponge en cellulose, matériau ingrat gommant toutes les précisions du cliché. Il entretient ainsi un flou mémoriel qui pourrait peut-être se justifier, si ce n’est que certaines images sont affublées d’accessoires (une ventouse, une cymbale, un cerceau) qui mettent le spectateur à distance, voire le provoquent. Aussi cette oeuvre évoquant une catastrophe majeure se révèle-t-elle quelque peu anecdotique, les associations d’idées de McEwen paraissant plutôt incongrues. Aux icebergs dévastateurs, quoique métaphoriques, on préférera des scènes plus contemporaines, comme cette catastrophe aérienne ou ce tunnel sous l’Hudson, à New York. Ici, le sentiment de catastrophe ou de dangerosité n’a aucun affect historique. Il offre un aspect distancié de la réalité, notamment par l’usage de couleurs ambivalentes, comme si tout cela n’était qu’un cauchemar, comme le fut naguère le Titanic, la nostalgie en moins.

Bernard Marcelis