ANAÏS BOILEAU
Anaïs Boileau’s (1992) early work freely combined Mediterranean architecture with clean-cut geometries and portraits of women basking in the sun. Between the two, a strange resonance could be heard, created by the sun’s reverberation on the photographed surfaces: epidermis, facades, sunglasses and other tanning accessories…The artist and the sun compose together, enjoying the play of shadows. In places, paint and its transparency make their appearance, adding to the confusion of the image. These experiments with collage, painting and photography offer a new body of abstract images.
The flatness of abandoned bodies echoed that of colored walls. The photograph, though very much figurative, was filled with the silence of forms, the interplay of their surfaces and colors. In retrospect, the Plein Soleil that made her name is a preamble to the photographer’s recent experiments. Still in the South of France, she now composes in her garden.
The means are simple: a few sheets of paper, gathered together for the palette of specific textures and colors they deploy, here and there accessories and various objects, and then, the effect of the sun on their surfaces.
BURNING SUN – SHAPES
This project is the result of several stages of experimentation. I work in an artistic gesture that ranges from photography to painting and collage. These images are based on photographs of different paper textures and materials reflected in a sheet of mirror.
The photographed forms are already in motion, distorted by the reflection. In these photographs, I cut out organic shapes that become thicknesses in the image, shapes framed in black, like shadows taking shape. In these compositions, I evoke the sunny garrigue of southern France. These almost floral compositions are mental landscapes of the environment in which I grew up. A colorful, multi-layered memory that unfolds with each layer. The paint, applied directly to the final print in a final stage of the process, brings the color back to life. The use of color as an element of light, illuminating and sublimating by touch, adds complexity to the abstract image.
The interplay and blending of textures and materials brings us back to physical matter, with surfaces blending together in a visual drunkenness, similar to the vertigo that the sun brings.
