Is that your garden
2015-2018
“ A l’origine, je voulais que cette série soient ironiques et légères. Je m’y suis efforcé, j’y ai travaillé, mais n’y suis pas parvenu… les images qui apparaissaient étaient plus interessantes que cela. Plus profondes, plus belles que je ne l’avais espéré.”
“Originally, I wanted this series to be ironic and light-hearted. I tried, I worked at it, but didn't succeed... the images that appeared were more interesting than that. Deeper, more beautiful than I had hoped.”
Un plaidoyer écologique ? Les déchets générés par nos modes de vie font désormais partie de notre environnement. Avec Is That Your Garden, Stéphane Chevillon intègre à la pureté originelle du monde le contenu de nos poubelles, jouant sur l’ambiguïté du dessein et interrogeant la place du beau. En tant qu’ancien photographe publicitaire, il se joue du greenwashing et étend le propos : il se questionne alors sur sa propre capacité de résilience quant à un monde qu’il ne reconnaît plus mais qu'il doit embrasser.
Les photographies sont réalisées sous l’eau. Pas de retouche numérique. Ce que nous pouvons voir n'est que le produit de la lumière, du temps et du hasard. Il était nécessaire pour ce projet qu’il n’y ait aucune intervention dans l’ordonnance de l’image. L’idée première étant de capturer une rencontre aléatoire empreinte de beauté. Qu’il soit le fruit de contingences ou une méthode de production artistique importe peu, le hasard est ici un outil nécessaire pour obtenir une image vraie autant que forte. Une image éventuellement capable de générer un sentiment de transcendance.
An ecological advocacy? The waste generated by our lifestyles has become part of our environment. With Is That Your Garden, Stéphane Chevillon integrates the contents of our trash into the original purity of the world, playing on the ambiguity of design and questioning the place of beauty. As a former advertising photographer, he plays with greenwashing and extends the point: he then questions his own capacity for resilience in a world that he no longer recognizes but which he must embrace.
No digital retouching here. What we can see is only the product of light, time and chance. The photographs are therefore taken underwater. It was necessary for this project that there be no intervention in the arrangement of the image. The first idea being to capture a random encounter imbued with beauty. Chance is here a necessary tool to obtain a true as well as strong image. An image potentially capable of generating a feeling of transcendence.
“I am generally not a fan of ecological art. I find it heavy-handed, and illustrative of issues rather than free forms following their own path. These photographs allow for both spontaneity and an editorial agenda. Is That Your Garden (ITG), is the series title, and is, in the words of Stephane, “an ecological photographic advocacy, using nature, waste, and induced disasters”. Leaves and flowers, in different stages of decomposition, share the frame and the water everything floats in with waste products, detritus, and other horrors…all things unnatural. They all are slowly in motion with the elements of the pictures breathing in and out, in a slow-motion dance macabre…garbage and garlands. The exhalation is what makes them so unusual… they are not still lifes, because they are not still. Light suffuses the compositions, but it is not clear from where it emanates. Rules of composition also seem not to apply, and yet they seem quite comfortably arranged. I could go on, but I better not. You have already been so patient. Come see these and know that they are unique in your experience.”
Alan Klotz - 2018 - Alan Klotz Gallery - west end avenue - NYC
