From January 28 to February 27, 2022, Studio Artera is staging its very first exhibition, Close-up, curated by Elora Weill-Engerer, curator and art critic.
Set in the intimate world of a showroom apartment, the exhibition brings together a selection of recent works by four of the agency's artists: Béatrice Bissara, Adeline Care, Romain Lalire and Vincent Marcq.
"Close-Up" is a technique used in prestidigitation to designate a manipulation performed as close as possible to the spectators' gaze. This micro-magic does not draw the strength of its effect from the multiplication of objects of attention, but from the complicity it develops with the audience. The "effectiveness" of the work - to use the term employed by the first art critics of the 18th century - is therefore to be found in the tension between the pretended exposure of what is given to be seen and the artist's technical mastery, partially forgotten as such. A genuine deception, then, to which the viewer nonetheless willingly adheres. The analogy between art and magic - beyond a certain "magic of art" expressing a state that rebels against analysis - is to be sought in the realm of belief. "I believe because it's absurd", as Saint Augustine put it.
In the cinema, "close-up" also refers to a tight framing at chest or face level to highlight the emotion provoked in the character: literally, the indisputable effect of what escapes our understanding is put before our eyes, and we can therefore only believe it. It is around this question of effect that the links between art and magic are forged: the artist, freed from the classical constraints of the rules of the "beautiful object" alone, makes the action of the work on the subject a criterion of appreciation in itself. The earliest art objects of so-called archaic civilizations did not derive their value from beauty, but from their magical efficacy, their effective action. It makes sense, then, to see in the possible effects on the viewer a field shared by the artist and the magician: impression, illusion, surprise, even hypnosis, ecstasy, stupor. Close-up, Studio Artera's first exhibition, brings together four of the studio's artists to explore the intimate effects that can be induced by certain forms of prestidigitation.
Elora Weill-Engerer
Exhibition curator
L'ILLUSIONNISTE
Romain Lalire's magical gesture is a series of photographs designed to be animated in augmented reality. Presented as close as possible to the viewer's gaze, the escamotage tricks fascinate through the repetition of the act and its digital manipulation, sowing doubts about what is really being shown.
THE SPIRIT
Through the Livres-murmures and the Horus kinetic device, Béatrice Bissara seeks to turn the artistic experience into a moment of almost shamanic connection between the work and the viewer. The effect should be that of an expanded state of consciousness, based on the principles of synesthesia and harmony: voices are heard, visions appear.
LA SYBILLE
On a mountainside or at the edge of a cave, Adeline Care's figures are on the verge of transformation, in that liminal moment that precedes their mutation. Water, sulfur and fire form an unreal yet natural backdrop to the photographed scene, heralding or revealing a phenomenon that defies logic.
L'ENCHANTEUR
Devoid of any human presence, Vincent Marcq's photographs are nonetheless "inhabited", in both the social and ghostly sense that the term
conjures up. Questioning the links between architecture and intimacy, the shimmering-colored spaces are enchanted, as if the apparent banality of the places concealed some traces of an extraordinary story.
ABOUT STUDIO ARTERA
Co-founded by Mathilde Soubie and Giuliano Saldicco, brought together by their deep passion for the visual arts, the Studio Artera agency was born of the realization that there was a lack of proximity between artists and the general public. Wishing to forge links between these different players, the agency offers personalized support to its fourteen artists. The range of services on offer extends from exhibiting and selling works to collaborating with companies and setting up projects in public spaces. Mathilde Soubie and Giuliano Saldicco are motivated by the need to create multiple gateways between artistic creation and the general public, and are keen to open up the exciting and audacious worlds of their artists to as many people as possible.
ABOUT ELORA WEILL-ENGERER
Art critic and curator
Elora Weill-Engerer graduated from the École du Louvre and Paris IV - Sorbonne in contemporary art and museology. An art critic and independent curator, she is a researcher in art history and contemporary art. Elora Weill-Engerer is the author of exhibition texts and articles for several magazines, galleries and books on contemporary artistic practices. With a particular taste for art on the borderline between abstraction and figuration, she attaches great importance to the coherence of an artist's work and the sincerity of his or her practice. Her areas of research also include contemporary Gypsy art, new pictorial objects and the minimalists.
