Juxtapoz Magazine – How to Get a “Sunburn” in The World of Laurent Proux

Laurent Proux’s latest work, created on the Casa de Velázquez, are flooded with daylight. Madrid’s local weather is clearly no stranger to the sunburned factor that has given a brand new twist to his artwork. Proux’s large-format, sun-drenched work play on naturally contradictory ranges of depth. Gentle cascades by way of them, bathing the whole lot in its aura, or quite the opposite, carving out and incising shadows and figures. By this method, the exhibition Sunburn at Semiose highlights two seemingly reverse situations: on the one hand bare characters frolic in pure environment, whereas on the opposite, figures labor in weaving or stitching workshops. Two universes sit facet by facet, the primary a product of fantasy, the opposite considered one of realism. Gentle performs a vital, dramatic position: Proux has give you contrasting storylines, alternating between naturalism and the supernatural. Our bodies appear to be ensnared within the rays and nets of an invisible bodily drive. The work are pervaded by a sure pressure, of which mild is each the vector and the revealer.

The exhibition Sunburn transports us into an overheated world that’s without delay acquainted and discordant. Giant, flamboyant scenes in spectacular codecs tackle easy topics: eroticism and work. These two themes delve into the very coronary heart of our particular person and social existences. Everybody can relate to them. “Nobody can think about a world the place burning ardour would definitively stop to bother us. Nobody, alternatively, can envisage the potential of a life that might not be certain by calculation.”(1) “Burning ardour” on the one hand, productive motive and its calculation on the opposite. It’s clear that Proux’s work burn or are illuminated by what’s normally crepuscular mild. The 2 collection replicate this naturalistic repartition, every having its personal luminescence. The stylized bacchanalian romps are set in an imaginary décor, whereas the workshops betray a extra tangible, photographic supply, originating from documentary pictures of sure social settings, taken by the artist because the beginnings of his observe. Sunburn provides the spectator a imaginative and prescient of fiery but tangible portray: the characters are fully absorbed of their actions, bare within the throes of sexual abandon for some, focused on their office machines for others.

The solar acts because the director of pictures for the exhibition: its works, that one may describe as photosensitive, radiating a paradoxical power, exuding a sure strangeness inside clear, simple compositions. Its astral luminosity disrupts any preliminary proof of a selected scene. Its cellular and intrusive eye penetrates the guts of every scenario, insinuating itself between our bodies, twisting and capturing them from any variety of factors of view on the identical time, from above, frontally and from behind, as is the case with the bucolic frolicking. Proux approaches lighting like a baroque or classical painter, or maybe extra like a theatrical or film director, establishing a exact scenic area with its personal motion, ambiance and characters. One exercise can conceal many others. —Anne Bonnin