Erwan Venn presents pictures from the Headless series at Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois. This set of digitally altered photographs originates from family archives discovered by Erwan Venn in 2010.
Through a photo-editing program, Venn erases the protagonists’ bodies: we are thus coerced into looking at details without bodies, in order to observe motions, attitudes, a shoelace or a floating shirt button. The pictures are phantasmagorical, unreal; their protagonists become specters of history.
A series of drawings completes these edited pictures: Petits Bretons, pictures of children with ashen eyes, drawn from the same family archives. Directly referencing the Village des damnés, the Petits Bretons series shows how doctrines shape children’s gazes.
Erwan Venn’s childhood was surrounded by the Arthurian legends and the tales of St. Malo travelers, at the edge of Brocéliande forest, in Gallo Brittany. Draped in scathing causticity, riddled with historical references and poetic metaphors, this long-term project illustrates the enduring legacy of historic wounds.
Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois
Opened in 1990 in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois has been able to bring together heritage and contemporary artists through large-scale exhibitions. The presentation of major works from New European Realism and American Hyperrealism alongside a vibrant contemporary artistic scene remains the hallmark of the gallery.
Since its inception the gallery has successively organised the first French solo shows of artists such as Alain Bublex (1992), Gilles Barbier (1995), Richard Jackson (2001), Pilar Albarracín (2008), Pierre Seinturier (2014), and more recently of Iranian duo Peybak (2015), and the artists Lucie Picandet and Zhenya Machneva in 2018.
This story is extended by the representation of avant-garde artists of the 1960s such as Tinguely, Villeglé, Stämpfli and Niki de Saint Phalle and that of American hyperrealists such as Robert Cottingham and John DeAndrea.
In 2016, Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois has expanded and opened a second exhibition space at 33 rue de Seine, and continues to develop a major consulting and catalog publishing activity.