![\"88_DO08_Morisset_Sauvage_Plein](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/88_DO08_Morisset_Sauvage_Plein-soleil-2.jpg\")
Plein soleil<\/em>, 2014.
Photos : courtesy of Galerie Escougnou-Cetraro<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
In visu Artialisation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n With much of the artist\u2019s work making reference to landscape as a collective representation, Sauvage\u2019s approach could, from this standpoint, be seen to follow in the wake of visual studies. By systematically using found images from individuals, magazines, and the Internet, he conveys a quasi-sociological perspective of the place of landscape in the contemporary imagination: between tourism, the need for fresh air, and the quest for beauty. His works could be approached, for example, in relation to the collection of postcards of Niagara Falls by American artist Zoe Leonard in the installation You see I am here after all <\/em>(2008). A wall of several thousand postcards spanning the first half of the twentieth century shows groupings of popular views of the site, inviting us to ponder how mass tourism and the plethora of idealized images associated with it perpetuate the transformation of parts of nature into iconic imagery. Sauvage likewise works with landscapes recognizable through what have become emblematic details, like the lavender fields for Provence or cacti for the desert. And he has also created postcards. However, his process is less demonstrative and more open to the creative possibilities of popular imagery. For his installation Vall\u00e9es<\/em> (2010), for example, he used snapshots found in family collections from the 1970s, an era when colour film had become widely accessible to the general public. Undoubtedly taken during leisurely walks, these shots bear witness to a type of amateur photography inspired by professional compositions that the artist has recycled in an artistic context. Within his installation, two separate projectors transpose pairs of these images onto the same wall, synthesizing them into single images. Thus, beyond the sociological aspect, the work reveals simulated landscapes\u200a\u2014\u200amirages of sorts, borne of hazy memories or dreamscapes, images reinvested with poetry. These projected images are subsequently re-photographed and printed as postcards in sets of three (the two originals plus the synthesized image), accompanied by classificatory or decorative colour codes. Parodying commercial postcards aimed at tourists, this ensemble reinvents the postcard landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Similarly, in Plein soleil<\/em> (2014), a slideshow of eighty-one images (a full Carousel) plays in a loop showing images including sunflowers and Montagne Sainte-Victoire\u200a\u2014\u200ain other words, images that conjure up both the nature of Provence and its portrayal in art history. Once again, amateur photos inspired by compositions in well-known paintings evoke the democratization of photography. Yet, here they have been transformed into works of art, for the principle motif in these slides is not the photographed landscapes per se, but the white circles of light (like suns, as the title suggests) that dominate the centre of each image. They seem to have been added, like a pictorial gesture superimposed on the mechanical image, while in reality, they were created by substraction, or more precisely by obliteration. Here, just like in the aforementioned landscapes, which had been manipulated to be transposed to other media and other registers of the imagination, the Provencal views\u200a\u2014\u200apartially hidden for the most part\u200a\u2014\u200aare exchanged for a fictitious excess of light, which we will return to later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, the recent Deux d\u00e9serts <\/em>project(2013\u200a\u20132015), a 3D video that can be presented as an installation (a projection framed by wallpaper, accompanied by an original soundtrack) whose point of departure are cover photos from the archives of Desert Magazine<\/em>, published from 1937 to 1985, which as its name suggests, specialized in a broad range of desert subjects.3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - See Desert Magazine of the Southwest<\/em>, www.mydesertmagazine.com.<\/span> Once again, the artist focuses on the circulation of photographs, which little by little form collective representations that ultimately substitute for reality. One must remember here that the desert is traditionally depicted as a hostile environment, as evoked by the challenges facing the Hebrews as they crossed the desert in the Old Testament, for example. It is only in the twentieth century, through explorations led by adventurers whose accounts tell of exotic lands\u200a\u2014\u200aeveryone knows the example of Lawrence of Arabia\u200a\u2014\u200athat the desert was laid out as a landscape, with the erg, sand desert, and dune as prominent motifs.4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - For more on this subject, see, for example, the book by Chantal Dagron and Mohamed Kacimi, Naissance du d\u00e9sert<\/em> (Paris: Balland, 1992).<\/span> As for the image of the American desert, it too was conceptualized using characteristics mostly garnered from Western films. In this manner, Deux d\u00e9serts <\/em>gives us a sense of the desert clich\u00e9, as conveyed through the covers of Desert Magazine<\/em>. Yet here again, the reading of the images is disrupted by the device introduced by the artist. Like in Vall\u00e9es<\/em>, the images are assembled in twos, but this time using a much more sophisticated procedure. Processed in 3D, they are stretched and projected onto a structure made of mirrored strips placed at 90\u02da angles, thus transforming the images into sequences reminiscent of Op Art that plunge the spectator into a stroboscopic journey through recomposed desert land\u00adscapes. In fact, the piece is as reminiscent of Salon Agam, with its friezes painted on zigzag panels, created by Yaacov Agam in the early 1970s,5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - With the arrival of Val\u00e9ry Giscard d\u2019Estaing in 1974, the work commissioned by French president George Pompidou for one of the salons in the \u00c9lys\u00e9e Palace was dismantled and deposited in the collections of the Mus\u00e9e national d\u2019art moderne.<\/span> as of being adrift in Death Valley in Gus Van Sant\u2019s film Gerry<\/em> (2002), and the video of the desert under the influence of LSD as seen through a rotating mirrored prism in Trypps #7 (Badlands)<\/em> (2010) by American artist Ben Russell.6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - Ben Russell, Trypps #7 (Badlands)<\/em>, 2010, video, 9 min. 58 seconds. https:\/\/vimeo.com\/29406623.<\/span> In Deux d\u00e9serts<\/em>, the magazine cover shots are transformed into an artistic hallucination.7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - For the history and a definition of this phenomenon, see Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Chevrier, L\u2019hallucination artistique de William Blake \u00e0 Sigmar Polke<\/em> (Paris: L\u2019Arachn\u00e9en, 2012).<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Landscape as Darkness<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n If the starting point of Ludovic Sauvage\u2019s works are often representations of stereotypical landscapes, as suggested above, their views are disrupted by devices that distort, partially hide, or fragment them: superimposed projections, cut-outs, reflections that sometimes drive the images to the limits of readability. In this way, the landscapes, although relatively familiar, become less immediately accessible. A distance is created that leads to an artistic phenomenology of perception: the works give cause for introspection on our approach to reality today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visions of disrupted landscapes have been present since Sauvage produced his earliest works, notably in the video installation About Shangri-La<\/em> (2010). Recapturing images from Frank Capra\u2019s film Lost Horizon<\/em>, which tells of the mythical city of Shangri-La hidden in the Tibetan mountains, the artist created a 3D animation showing a semi-transparent view of a mountain turning around a cruciform structure, which, as it turns, briefly reveals a back\u00addrop showing the film set of the eternal city. This fleeting emergence evokes the uncertainty of the characters in the film regarding the real or illusory nature of the mountain community. Thus, the visual disturbance invoked by the 3D is a metaphor for the impossibility of accessing pure plenitude. Yet, on a simpler level, it is also a visual experience that explores the nature of the image. This same experimental approach is applied in Deux d\u00e9serts<\/em>, where the landscapes are set apart through the fragmentation and reflection of the images in the mirrored strips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This research into visual disruption is also found in the pierced slides of Plein soleil<\/em>, even if, in principle, the work focuses on the opposite\u200a\u2014\u200aclarity\u200a\u2014\u200athrough its use of light, literally. Indeed, replacing each erasure, flooding the centre of each image is a single beam of light unfiltered by the celluloid of the slide. In this sense, the work can be compared to experiments in Direct Cinema where \u201cwhat you see is what you see,<\/em>\u201d with light illuminating any manipulations directly made on the film. However, here, just a few seconds suffice to realize that the cut-out disc is caused by an excess of light, reminiscent of pictorial experiments on the dissolution of elements into darkness: I am thinking primarily of Matisse\u2019s blinding suns that transform light into broad black surfaces.8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - Henri Matisse, Porte-fen\u00eatre \u00e0 Collioure<\/em>, 1914, Paris, Mus\u00e9e national d\u2019art moderne.<\/span> The view is obscured by light itself. In an extension of Plein soleil<\/em>, the discs removed from the Provencal landscapes form the basis of a brand new series titled Pick\u2019a\u2019 Point<\/em> (2016)\u200a\u2014\u200aas in fixing a point in a landscape. Immersed in black ink, projected, re-photographed and printed on coloured fabric, the suns transform into halos of sombre landscapes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This new series is close to another, Nocturnes<\/em> (2015), a set of perforated slides in which the cut-out disc is displaced within the image, leaving a crescent of light from the projector to shine through. The result gives the impression of an eclipse in which the relationship between light and darkness takes on an eerie, even paradox\u00adical aspect, raising questions concerning the notion of bedazzlement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, this dialectic between light and darkness is, in a sense, also present in the large-scale work I escape real good<\/em> (2015), comprising two fabric panels hung between two metal rods, like curtains or blinds in front of a large window. Printed on the fabric is a partial image of a bird taken from National Geographic<\/em> magazine. A work even more Matissienne<\/em> than the others, it can be drawn apart to reveal the white wall, separating the image of the bird into two, or drawn together to show the bird as a single image. In this manner, the traditional image of a landscape viewed through a window is reversed, for it is only when the panels are closed that the motif is visible. The landscape can no longer be glimpsed through the window: it has permeated the fabric, impregnating it with an interior, rather than exterior vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Translated from the French by Louise Ashcroft<\/strong> <\/p>\n![\"88_DO08_Morisset_Sauvage_About](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/88_DO08_Morisset_Sauvage_About-Shangri-La-scaled.jpg\")
About Shangri-La<\/em>, 2010, capture vid\u00e9o.
Photos : courtesy of Galerie Escougnou-Cetraro<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"88_DO08_Morisset_Sauvage_Deux](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/88_DO08_Morisset_Sauvage_Deux-Deserts-\u2013-Motion-Picture-scaled.jpg\")
Deux D\u00e9serts \u2013 Motion Picture<\/em>, 2013\u20132015, capture vid\u00e9o.
Photo : courtesy of Galerie Escougnou-Cetraro<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"88_DO08_Morisset_Sauvage_Pick\u2019a\u2019Point](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/88_DO08_Morisset_Sauvage_PickaPoint-Blue-scaled.jpg\")
Pick\u2019a\u2019Point (Blue)<\/em>, 2015.
Photo : courtesy of Galerie Escougnou-Cetraro<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n