Alain Leloup gives us an exhibition of works by Monique Deregibus and Arno Gisinger in which the two artists question the current way of looking at the traces of History, and the status of their own photographic images.
Their works are hung from rails in the shape of an open figure of eight, which allows the various concerns of the show to come together, short-circuited, as it might be, into an encounter. One person’s images are thrown into a dialectical relationship with those of the other by dint of their complicity or, sometimes, of their disconnection. This desire on their part stems from reciprocal trust and a common sensibility, backed up by their stated wish to break with the idea of a single signature. A central alignment, acting as a kind of focus, is the means of achieving the spatial connection between these two remote geographies: the viewers of the series 12 Betrachterbilder (Image Observers) by Arno Gisinger find themselves opposite the portraits of sleeping Laotian children by Monique Deregibus. This confrontation raises the conceptual question of gaze. What does ''to see'' means ? And what of the ontological illusion of the image’s surface appeal? What can the world observed by the photograph expect from our interpretation of it?

The re-appropriation of a moment from an incomplete story, restored to the present through an encounter with the photographic image, can occur for the viewer, giving rise to meaning, emotion and even memory.

This sharing of sensitive experience of a world watched over by war and destruction constitutes a vast open-air site for the gradual deconstruction of everyone’s own particular logic. The exhibition, in its seriousness and in its lightness, is a privileged chink of light in the general over-enthusiasm and extravagance of today. It plays on chance encounters and the multiplicity of opposing places, eschewing hierarchy and suggesting to the spectator a web of possible readings.

Arno Gisinger - ENSP 1994
Born in 1964 in Austria. Lives and works in Paris. 
Arno Gisinger has developed a pluridisciplinary approach to his art over the last fifteen years, linking photography and historiography. After studies in History and German Philology at Innsbruck, he completed postgraduate work at ENSP in 1994. These studies led him to work on the links between memory, history, and photographic representations. Inspired by German thought of the inter-war period and the methods of New History, his works challenge us to a contemporary re-reading of grounded and groundless memory. His work tests visual representations of the past through their different forms of transmission: witnesses, objects, and places. The function of archives, the status of documents, the words of witnesses are central to his concerns. Gisinger was artist-in-residence in London in 1995-1996, in Paris in 2004, and in Vietnam in 2007. He teaches at the University of Paris 8, and at the École Supérieure d’Art, Lorraine. Among his several publications are Konstellation Benjamin, Imagined Wars and Unsichtbare Stadt. He exhibits regularly and is currently preparing a retrospective for 2012-2013 with four exhibition venues in Germany, France, Austria, and Switzerland.

Monique Deregibus - ENSP 1987
Born in 1955 in Marseille. Lives and works in Marseille. 
After studies in Literature and Cinema at the University of Aix-en-Provence, Monique Deregibus took her post-graduate diploma at the ENSP, Arles in 1987. Since that time, her work has been regularly exhibited in France and abroad. Each one of the series on display is devoted to a specific area; in some cases near home (Valence-le-Haut, the Rhône Valley, Marseille), sometimes far away (New Mexico, Odessa, Sarajevo, Beirut, Nicosia, Las Vegas). Publishing seems to be a necessary condition for working out her various projects. Her works include Tour de l'Europe (jointly published by DRAC Rhône-Alpes and Beaux-Arts de Valence), Hôtel Europa (Filigranes) and I love you for ever Hiba, (Filigranes). In her photo narratives, Deregibus attempts to carry over an edge of violence in the representation which has its intimate equivalent in the act of taking a photograph. She taught photography at the Valence Beaux-Arts from 1988 to 2004, and at the ENSP from 2000 to 2004. Since 2004, she is a tutor at the Lyon Beaux-Arts.

EXHIBITION
Everything seems to have been said
July 2nd - September 23, 2012
13200 Arles
France