QUEEN OF HEARTS

March 29 - May 12, 2018

BAPTISTE RABICHON

Queen of hearts

PBProject

Baptiste Rabichon composes his photographs like a painter. An RC photographic paper is his blank canvas, a territory of exploration for his composition process, mixing analog photography, digital images and the projection of diverse objects from his daily life. Within the darkness of the darkroom he gathers his memories while shaking up our relation to photography. Flowers picked a few days before are placed on the enlarger and mixed with pictures collected from the Internet or in magazines. But the almost scienti c approach of his aesthetic, which might evokes the herbaria of 21st century botanists, it’s disturbed by the sensuality of a mysterious female gure gently lying on the paper.

The making of stencils of various shapes and sizes is also a key point in his work. By keeping the light from reaching the paper, these elements created ad hoc and with thoroughness contribute to the creation of this harmonious fusion of human bodies and vegetal inlay. Some outcomes in certain areas of the paper proof that chance always has its word to say.

The evocative titles of his series show the very personal nature of his work and his intent to set on paper a moment’s feeling. It’s Paris, with its gardens, the 17th district with its Haussmanian apartments. By shifting our idea of photography, as much in form as in content, Baptiste Rabichon delivers works whose beauty is born from the alchemy between beings, objects and plants.

In an equally critical and loving approach to images, Baptiste Rabichon draws with the same rejoicing both from ancestral photography techniques such as photograms, cyanotypes, pinholes, and modern tools.

Born in Montpellier in 1987, Baptiste Rabichon lives and works in Paris. After viticulture and oenology studies, he went to ENSA Dijon in 2009, to ENSBA Lyon in 2011 and nally to ENSBA Paris in 2012 where he joined the studios of Claude Closky, P2F and Patrick Tosani. In 2014, he graduated from École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 2015 he joined the National Studio for Contemporary Arts (Le Fresnoy) from which he graduated in 2017 with honors from the jury. He is the recipient of 2017 BMW residency. He is currently working on the production of prints where digital and lm photography mix onto a same surface.