LES
APPARENCES
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SALTATION
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UNTITLED
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HUIS CLOS
Huis clos is a series of images composed of twenty-four photographs, divided into six groups. Each group thus depicts a room in a fictional apartment in which models pose with an attitude emphasizing their solitude, cohabiting with a decor that is uniquely theirs. Though each room appears distinct, all of these sets were in fact constructed in a single space, my bedroom, reinforcing the sense of an enclosed environment. These rooms are represented through a wide shot, a still life, a portrait, and finally a close-up. By creating these spaces from scratch, the intention is to invite the viewer to question themes such as staging, the performed image, photographic theatricality, and perception.
The images first catch the eye with their centered framing, frontal viewpoints, and minimalist aesthetic. Studio backdrops are used as walls, which immediately creates ambiguity regarding reality while also reinforcing the specificity of each room by assigning it a particular color. The objects themselves are few in number and, as a result, stand out more prominently, both in their own right and in relation to each other. Finally, the characters are shown alone, among objects, in moments of pause, hovering between presence and absence, thus recalling certain interior scenes from figurative painting, as exemplified for instance by Vilhelm Hammershøi or Bernard Buffet.
Through these stagings, reality and unreality merge thanks to the ambivalence created between ornamentation and objectivity, also evoking Thomas Demand’s ambiguous scenarios. Moreover, a kind of absurdity emerges from the fact that objects and figures occupy the same level: the characters are thereby objectified, while the objects are elevated. Furthermore, the models’ poses seem to question their very existence. Their faces are melancholic, their expressions stiff, their bodies frozen, reminiscent of certain portraits by Charles Fréger. Lastly, a particular relationship to perception is called into question, reminiscent of Barbara Probst. How do we see things? How is a completely artificial space perceived? How do images conceived as a series influence one another? How can a single image create the dramatic shift that alters the viewer’s gaze ?