To begin this new year of exhibitions, the gallery presents the exhibition "E blanc" by Patrick Bailly-Maître-Grand.
In one of his poems*, Arthur Rimbaud attributed colours to vowels. E is white.
In a truly analogical way, I felt certain that some of my works had some sort of elementary grammar which was not built on a theme or on a period of creation but on a haunting white tonality coating the subject, which was placed in some kind of void created by the photographic paper itself.
Finally, in this exhibition, I selected “E type” photographs revealing the luminous fight between the plaster powder and the imprint, the immaculate cardboard and the support paper, the intense sunlight drawing some shadows or relics with a pure white halo.
May the “viewer” find a need for freedom and escape completely opposed to these dark images (Rimbaud’s As), which often inhabit my other works. But after all, isn’t photography the black “writing” created with the whiteness of light, A born from E?
Patrick Bailly-Maître-Grand
(*) « Voyelles ». 1872
