New Gallery, La Fonda, Brings Emerging Art to France’s Coolest Coastal Town of Biarritz
Centering around themes of desire, consumption and the body, the season featured three showcases: paintings and sculptures by Hanna Rochereau, photography by duo Chaumont-Zaerpour (Agathe Zaerpour and Philippine Chaumont) and a series of short films by director and editor Lucia Martinez Garcia.
“The art scene in Biarritz is definitely growing, and we're thrilled to be part of it,” continues Christie. “The town’s blend of historic charm and tourist appeal makes it a perfect place for this kind of project. We’re using our international experience to meet the rising demand for diverse cultural offerings. We’re planning for both busy times and quieter moments to keep things balanced and interesting.”
Read on as office’s Paris and Biarritz-based Editor-At-Large Paige Silveria has a brief chat with everyone.
Paige Silveria— Tell me about the show, "Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost." It looks like it was intentionally created for the gallery space.
Hanna Rochereau— I’ve always wanted to make a show that adapts to a specific space and this was the first time I was really able to do it. I’ve been able to plan and work on it for about a year. This gallery is so interesting — it really allowed me to create a concept that was theatrical, something that’s not very easy to do within a white cube. It was really important for me to fit into the space, especially when considering the color and the materials I chose. For instance, all of the frames I made myself to match the existing framing on the walls.
PS— Can you give me more background on your organizing concept?
HR— I intentionally create a kind of tension between what is visible and what is hidden, which ties into the exhibition title. The idea is about reversing roles, where the display itself becomes the object presented as luxury, while the "purchasable" object disappears. I’m super interested in window displays, behind-the-scenes storage areas, the framing that is created for the products, the boxes and wrapping. My work is all about desire and desiring objects, and the frameworks that help to create that desire in the consumer. I love to play with what is missing in the space and shift the focus to these frameworks. A lot of my paintings are linked to the fashion world. There will be several collections each year, so quickly, and so much consumption is generated. So while my subject is all about this fast-paced world, for me as a painter, my process is very slow — digesting the concept and creating the artworks.
Paige Silveria— Tell me about creating your exhibition, “Points of Sale.”
Chaumont-Zaerpour (Agathe Zaerpour and Philippine Chaumont)— When Marie and Christie suggested we do an exhibition in that space, we immediately thought of a project that would engage with the architecture. It's a very bourgeois environment, and we thought it would be interesting to display something reminiscent of a boutique, but in an irreverent way. Recently we've been very interested in exploring the imprint of fashion imagery on our intimate relationship to clothing. The construction of fashion images relies on a set of codes, the mastery of which keeps those who create them in an illusion of superiority, while ignorance of these codes excludes the intended audience.
In “Points of Sale,” we cropped and enlarged pretty brutally some archives from our editorial and commercial projects, to form a naive and linear inventory of anonymous feet displaying their shoes. We wanted to reduce the status of the photographs from which they are extracted to their essential advertising triviality. Arranged in a continuous line, they highlight the perpetual metamorphosis: these codes that we create and that, in turn, transform us. The images themselves have a dusty feeling from being re-photographed, enlarging the print raster of the magazine they come from or the grain of the film. They are printed on a very thin and yellowish paper that feels like big pieces of old newspaper, hung on the walls with tiny pieces of paper tape: when the high windows are open, they float like spirits haunting the place.
PS— What kinds of projects do you love to do and why?
CZ— We have a great time working on both our commercial and artistic projects. We always worked in a way where both are really connected. Recently we've made much more space for our personal work, and it often is a comment on our work as fashion photographers. So each part really nourishes the other. A lot of our images start from references to the history of photography and its acceptance as an artistic medium. We've also always felt very drawn to vintage fashion imagery, and earlier aesthetic codes in general, iconic advertising campaigns, women’s magazines from the 60s, 70s, 80s and to classic photography. We try to use the language of fetishism that underlies these references and to subvert it to the point of absurdity. Having studied graphic design and worked in the publishing world before photography, we attach a great deal of importance to the relationship between images and the resulting narrative. The final form of our images is most times a layout or a sequence, and we have a hard time considering each image on its own. So we love storyboarding our stories meticulously: we usually draw each spread we're going to shoot, and determine in advance where each image will be in the layout. So we're quite organized when we shoot. We usually get more experimental in the editing process. And being the two of us makes every part of the process really exciting. It's so helpful bouncing ideas together, and so reassuring to be able to navigate that industry being around your best friend at all times.
Paige Silveria— The films that were screened with La Fonda were absolutely heartbreaking. Can you explain the recurring focus and themes throughout your work?
Lucia Martinez Garcia— I’m interested in portraits, particularly of women. When a person transmits emotions to me, I want to film them and showcase their beauty and fragility. I like to make films infused with both poetry and violence. My characters are often filmed at stages of their lives where they’re lost, searching for themselves; where they are vulnerable and, at the same time, we perceive their strength and dignity. I try to capture the unspeakable.
PS— What's the process like of locating, casting and working with non-professional actors? Why do you prefer to hire with them?
LMG— Apart from my last film “Blue Light,” I wrote all my projects knowing who the actor was going to be. I draw inspiration from their personalities, from the experiences of those around me, and I stage it in situations that I imagine. For "Blue Light", it's different, because I wanted to experiment with other things: 16MM, having a person I don't know play, creating narration without words, etc. For “I’m the only one I wanna see,” [described as “A woman, a dancer, a creature, dances, free. She laughs at the violence, the insults, the looks that reign around her."] even if the film is not inspired by the actress, I knew her way of dancing and the abilities she had. She’s a very good friend, Léo Chalié, who played in my first films, and she became an actress afterwards. Now she plays in series and feature films, but I know she always wants to experiment with new things, and with this film, it was an opportunity to do so.
