Tania Franco Klein
Our Life in the Shadows: Contained (Self-portrait)
2016
Ed. 6 + 2 A.P.
Archival pigment print
105 x 70 cm
Our Life in the Shadows (2016-2017). Staged photographs meticulously elaborated for the camera result in intense images revealing an obsessive treatment of color, as the language to evoke a sense of mystery and evanescence that runs between lethargy and vigil. Her characters, entrancing yet exhausted, seem to be in an odd line between defeat and hope.
Approximate view with unframed print. Ask for exact available dimensions
Tania Franco Klein
Our Life in the Shadows: Toaster (Self-portrait)
2016
Ed. 6 + 2 A.P.
Archival pigment print
105 x 70 cm
Our Life in the Shadows (2016-2017). Staged photographs meticulously elaborated for the camera result in intense images revealing an obsessive treatment of color, as the language to evoke a sense of mystery and evanescence that runs between lethargy and vigil. Her characters, entrancing yet exhausted, seem to be in an odd line between defeat and hope.
Approximate view with unframed print. Ask for exact available dimensions
Tania Franco Klein
Our Life in the Shadows: Positive Disintegration (Self-portrait)
2017
Ed. 6 + 2 A.P.
Archival pigment print
105 x 70 cm
Our Life in the Shadows (2016-2017). Staged photographs meticulously elaborated for the camera result in intense images revealing an obsessive treatment of color, as the language to evoke a sense of mystery and evanescence that runs between lethargy and vigil. Her characters, entrancing yet exhausted, seem to be in an odd line between defeat and hope.
Approximate view with unframed print. Ask for exact available dimensions
Tania Franco Klein
Our Life in the Shadows: Morning Ritual
2016
Ed. 6 + 2 A.P.
Archival pigment print
105 x 70 cm
Our Life in the Shadows (2016-2017). Staged photographs meticulously elaborated for the camera result in intense images revealing an obsessive treatment of color, as the language to evoke a sense of mystery and evanescence that runs between lethargy and vigil. Her characters, entrancing yet exhausted, seem to be in an odd line between defeat and hope.
Approximate view with unframed print. Ask for exact available dimensions
Dorine Potel
Fake Faun: A true Afternoon for a Faun
2014
Ed. 7 + 2 A.P.
C print on metallic paper
66,5 x 53,2 cm
Fake Faun (2014) se inspira en el poema de Mallarmé L’après midi d’un faune (1876), que fuera adaptado a partitura musical por Debussy, posteriormente coreografiada por Nijinski para Les Ballets Russes en 1912 —causando conmoción y controversia épica— para luego ser adaptada por Nuréyev y actualmente reinterpretado por diversas compañías de ballet del mundo. La serie cuenta una mitología personal en la que el fauno salvaje se transforma en una joven mujer que encarna orgullosamente a la criatura sensual, sobre un fondo falso de cartón piedra, amenazada por la ciudad y las tentaciones contemporáneas. Entre edificios, en una sobredosis de luz azul. Ahora yace vencida por la urbanidad.
Approximate view with unframed print. Ask for exact available dimensions
Dorine Potel
Fake Faun: Dead Faune
2014
Ed. 7 + 2 A.P.
C print on metallic paper
80 x 64,5 cm
Fake Faun (2014) se inspira en el poema de Mallarmé L’après midi d’un faune (1876), que fuera adaptado a partitura musical por Debussy, posteriormente coreografiada por Nijinski para Les Ballets Russes en 1912 —causando conmoción y controversia épica— para luego ser adaptada por Nuréyev y actualmente reinterpretado por diversas compañías de ballet del mundo. La serie cuenta una mitología personal en la que el fauno salvaje se transforma en una joven mujer que encarna orgullosamente a la criatura sensual, sobre un fondo falso de cartón piedra, amenazada por la ciudad y las tentaciones contemporáneas. Entre edificios, en una sobredosis de luz azul. Ahora yace vencida por la urbanidad.
Approximate view with unframed print. Ask for exact available dimensions
Dorine Potel
Fake Faun: Milk
2014
Ed. 7 + 2 A.P.
C print on metallic paper
80 x 53 cm
Fake Faun (2014) se inspira en el poema de Mallarmé L’après midi d’un faune (1876), que fuera adaptado a partitura musical por Debussy, posteriormente coreografiada por Nijinski para Les Ballets Russes en 1912 —causando conmoción y controversia épica— para luego ser adaptada por Nuréyev y actualmente reinterpretado por diversas compañías de ballet del mundo. La serie cuenta una mitología personal en la que el fauno salvaje se transforma en una joven mujer que encarna orgullosamente a la criatura sensual, sobre un fondo falso de cartón piedra, amenazada por la ciudad y las tentaciones contemporáneas. Entre edificios, en una sobredosis de luz azul. Ahora yace vencida por la urbanidad.
Approximate view with unframed print. Ask for exact available dimensions
Dorine Potel
Endgame
2014
Ed. 7 + 2 A.P.
Archival pigment print
66,5 x 53,2 cm
Endgame (2014) Su título hace eco a la obra de teatro de Samuel Beckett: Final de Partida (escrita en 1957), donde a pesar de rehusarse a contar algo, la obra continua. El objeto nos remonta al universo festivo de las discotecas, esos mágicos sitios nocturnos (¡que son bastante macabros durante el día!). Primordialmente un soporte para la experimentación y prueba cierta materialidad, a imagen condensa literalmente distintos significados en uno, mediante una doble exposición invertida. Un pretexto para interpretar, contemplar y relacionar, pero prestos, antes de que la fiesta termine y fenezca.
Approximate view with unframed print. Ask for exact available dimensions
Vanitas Spectacle
Tania Franco-Klein (Mexico)
Dorine Potel (France)
“I die so dies the world.”
Ray Bradbury
Among all eras and disciplines there has been a link between beauty and death as long as one may be used to signify the other. As in the Dutch Vanitas paintings, where beautiful objects around a skull, warned us that it is useless to be distracted in the banalities of life before the imminence of death.
Arthur Danto mentioned that beauty was perceived as “the world that delays the accomplishment of higher goals”; therefore its abuse in the arts obliged to make a pause in order to be represented.
In our days that seem to be what Guy Debord foresaw in 1967 as “a world which really is topsy-turvy, where the true is a moment of the false.” the banal beauty seems essential to bare the ambiguous promise of an after-dead life.
Danto and Debord may agree that beauty and banality are relative concepts existing on each spectator’s perception only.
In ALMANAQUE’s spring 2017 exhibition, Tania Franco-Klein y Dorine Potel perform a mise-en-scene dangling from a sort of a life Vanita inside our memory: fashion editorials, advertisements, cult-cinema or ballet and their adaptations.
Franco-Klein is at the same time the observer and the observed, while the props constructed by Potel are presented as a fortunate object-trouvé. And in both cases, the characters strangely known at some déjà-vu performed with artificial naturality. An imaginary abundant in symbols that perhaps was knitted with a tailor-made beauty for each spectator.
