Caroline Reveillaud’s work raises the question of how images are looked at, the intricate relationships forged between them and our perceptions, the existence of an observing subject constituted in a historical framework(1). Her work is about images, their ways of being in the world and their appearance processes, it is about ontology and ontophany of the images.
Her research develops from her own visual experience: an introduction to art, anecdotal and personal, via photographed works (distributed in magazines, popular books or historical documents aiming analytical purposes). This empirical learning, imbued with affects, of sculptures and paintings throughout their reproduction, their photogeny(2), their seductive, partial, mysterious virtuality and contained potentialities; leaves a lasting mark on Caroline Reveillaud’s practice. Disturbed by these icons, their perceptual effects provoked in part by their technical mediations, she tries to understand why they fascinate her so much and tries to deconstruct little by little the intrinsically acquired look that she unconsciously built towards them by developing her own evolving corpus (photographic and filmic) that she stores and continually reshuffles like a card game. This collection, constituted and frequently increased by her own images, exists as a base from which she develops new spatial configurations and sensitive readings of her datas during exhibitions. Narrative descriptions, indexing and classification systems then appear as constituent aesthetic elements of her installations. We find there kinds of furniture, both technical tools of manipulation and proper sculptural language. The documents thus circulate, changing media, perceptual screens (from a painting to a furniture, existing as a designed object, passing through a book or a film), existing in multiple ways; their substrate mutates. Punctually extracted from their archives, they appear and question us. The artist’s explorations somehow try to deintertwine knots of perceptions internalized by our cultural and contextual reading tools, consciously or unconsciously integrated by us. The temporal and physical depth of images, literally and figuratively, the shadow they cast, the light that emanates from them, the filters that are applied to them, the invisible frames and grids they are made of and from which they can be freed, the circulation spaces they use, the iconic mutability, etc. all are subjects surveyed by Caroline Reveillaud.
(1) “[…] Vision and its effects are forever linked to the potentialities of an observing subject, both historical product and place of certain practices, techniques, institutions and procedures of subjectivation.[…] Although it is obviously a person who sees, an observer is above all a person who sees within the framework of a characterized set of possibilities, a person who fits into a system of conventions and limitations.[…] If we can say that, there is an specific observer to the 19th century, as in any other era, only as the effect of an irreducibly heterogeneous system of discursive, social, technological and institutional relations. This constantly changing field does not preexist an observing subject. […]” Crary, J., Maurin, F., & Boidy, M. (2016). In TECHNIQUES DE L’OBSERVATEUR Vision and modernity in the 19th century (p. 33). OUT.6
(2) Parcollet, R., Aubart, F., Douroux, X., Leguillon, P., Ostende, F., Pestellini Laparelli, I., Poinsot, J.-M., & Poivert, M. (2018). Photogénie de l’exposition (1re éd.). MANUELLA.
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Caroline Reveillaud graduated in 2016 from the National School of Fine-Arts in Paris. In 2017, she co-founded the artist-run space In.plano (L’Île Saint-Denis) and has worked there ever since, alternating between personal productions, curating collective events and organizing cycles of exhibitions. She has been represented by Florence Loewy Gallery (Paris) since her first solo exhibition in May 2017. She exhibited her work there last May of 2022 for her third solo show. She presented her work at FRAC Grand Large Dunkerque, Villa du Parc Centre d’Art in Annemasse, Collection Lambert in Avignon, Domaine de Kéravel in Plouha as well as in Paris at Doc!Work, AU LIEU, Cité internationale des arts, Delpire&co, Cinéma Silencio des Prés, Galerie E.Mouchet, Espace Topographie de l’Art, Musée National des Beaux-arts de Paris, Espace Bubenberg, Galerie H.Lacharmoise, Moulin de la Croix, Galerie Standard, etc. She participated in several research and creation residencies, in 2017 at Ferme of Haut-Quincé in Rennes, in 2018 at Moulin de la Croix in Saint-Etienne-du-Grès, in 2022 at Domaine de Kéravel. In 2019 she received support for galleries by CNAP for her second solo exhibition «Summa I O ∫»; in 2021 her project «Sharp-eyed» was supported by the Fondation des Artistes; in 2022 she received support from the CNAP for the research and production of her project «Biomimético-Imago» . In 2023 she pursued a one-year residency at Mains d’Oeuvres (Saint-Ouen) and obtained a research and production residency at La Friche, on Reunion Island with the CNAP Suite Program.