Phénomènes, is French photographer Marina Gadonneix’s first solo exhibition in the United States, presented in conjunction with her solo show at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Gadonneix strikingly documents incredible meteorological and astrophysical phenomena. Here, avalanches coexist with hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, aurora borealis, shooting stars, colliding black holes, and meteorite impacts.
Inspired by scientist Kristan Birkeland’s early 20th century experiments to reproduce the aurora in laboratory conditions, Gadonneix imagines the laboratory as a world theater in this series. Initiated in 2014 with a residency at the Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), the artist travelled to different research centers, including NASA to study the phenomena.
Gadonneix’s work explores the relationship between observed reality and simulation, and the artificial reproduction of phenomena that are simultaneously scientific and enigmatic in nature.
Join us at the FIAF Gallery on Thursday, April 20 for the exhibition’s opening and a chance to meet Marina Gadonneix.
Marina Gadonneix
Marina Gadonneix is a French artist who graduated in 2002 from the National School of Photography in Arles. In 2020, she was awarded the prestigious Prix Niépce Gens d’images, the first professional photography prize created in France and awarded annually since 1955.
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Her work weaves a complex link between documentary and fiction through images of places given over to temporary neglect. In each series, the artist explores the startling transition of the landscape from a rugged territory to a fantastical image, or from a form of evidence of reality to its most metaphorical mental construction. Marina Gadonneix’s photographs play with the encounter of document, simulation and fiction. Gadonneix is interested in the projection of the individual’s imagination onto specific fictional spaces, in other words spaces for inhabitation by props, imagery and imagination. Deserted places and interiors create a rather disturbing atmosphere where the boundary between real objects and fictitious incidents becomes blurred. Gadonneix’s work has appeared in numerous solo and group shows both in France and internationally including Phillips de Pury, New York; Centre photographique d’Ile-de-France, Pontault Combault; Rencontres internationales de la photographie d’Arles; Le point du jour, Cherbourg; Le jeu de Paume, Paris; and Le grand palais, Paris. In 2006 she was awarded the HSBC photographic prize, and in 2016, Gadonneix was awarded the Dummy Book Award by Fondation LUMA and the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie, Arles. She lives and works in Paris and she is represented by Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Paris.
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