Human presence
Focused on space and the universe, researchers are multiplying projects of conquest and colonization of the planets. According to their prognosis, one day we will be forced to leave a sick world that has become unliveable. We will have to desert, abandon a world that would then become silent. And if D-Day was to come tomorrow, what would our civilisation be leaving behind, and what would our new lands look like ? This is what we wanted to imagine in this collective exhibition bringing together the artists Brodbeck & de Barbuat and Cerise Doucède at Galerie Ségolène Brossette.
In the series Memories of a Silent World. The artworks by Simon Brodbeck and Lucie de Barbuat tell of a world deserted by humanity. Some survivors, like ghosts, haunt spaces known to be high places of human activity. These places become theatrical settings from which emanates a sweet melancholy. These photographs take us back to the origins of photography and finally, to our common history.
Regularly, new planets are discovered outside our solar system. Far from being a mere fantasy, these exoplanets offer a glimpse of the possibility of a life far from the Earth, when we will be done exploiting it and destroying it. It may be time to colonise the Universe, but what will we found? For many scientists, the adaptation modes of photosensitive organisms could modify the conditions of appearance of colors. Therefore, we would have new landscapes beyond any reference. These sets were imagined by Cerise Doucède in her series Nouvelles Terres.
Through a scenography made up of vestiges of our time, we wanted to bring these two worlds together. The old one, our memories and our history, and the one of tomorrow, with still unexplored and uncertain landscapes. A way to question ourselves about our relationship with the environment.
Julien Houry
Exhibition in the context of PhotoSaintGermain
Ségolène Brossette Galerie, 2015