Valérie Belin, the Unquiet Images, Centre Pompidou, Paris
06.24.15 to 09.14.15
from 11 am to 9 pm
every day except Tuesday
Centre Pompidou
Place Georges-Pompidou
75004 Paris
France
First solo exhibition of the artist at Centre Pompidou, this presentation of about thirty works revolves around the notion of uncanny strangeness.
Valérie Belin makes play with uncertainty through her treatment of light, contrasts, the proportions of the prints and other skilfully orchestrated parameters. When looking at these images, it is often hard to say whether what you see is alive or inanimate, real or virtual, natural or artificial: subtle details that interrupt daily continuity, harking back to Sigmund Freud’s «uncanny strangeness». He defined this as "raising doubt as to whether an apparently animate object really is alive, and conversely, whether a lifeless object might indeed be animate, with reference to the impression made on us by waxwork figures, ingeniously constructed dolls and automata." [Sigmund Freud, "Uncanny Strangeness", 1919]. This is precisely what gives Valérie Belin’s works their singular power. The choice of the works brought together here, Michael Jackson, Black Women I, Lido, Meat, Engines..., illustrates this scientific aspect of her work.
The exhibition is accompanied by a book published jointly with Éditions Dilecta containing essays by Larisa Dryansky and Clément Chéroux, together with an interview with Valérie Belin and Roxana Marcoci.
