Lee Ufan Arles
par un matin calme
Park Chan-wook
July 6 to October 4 2026
Curation: Valérie Duponchelle
Park Chan-wook as photographer — this is the contemplative version of a hyperactive filmmaker who makes the most of his moments of calm and freedom to photograph without any predetermined goal. Whatever catches his highly trained eye. Whatever charms, surprises, or amuses him, whatever makes his mind wander. A natural motif, a rock, a trunk that resembles a body. A cat that reminds us that the human being is just one species among others. An orange patch in an ocean of greenery, like a small earthly sun. A cord, a bright yellow vestige of the industrial world, against a grey wall. A perfect landscape, in sumptuous emerald green, like the garden that holds The Handmaiden, the servant imprisoned with her lover (2016); a beige beach like the final scene of Decision to Leave, of a deadly beauty (2022).
His photographs are anchored in long, silent, suspended time. They are the freeze-frame that provides material for his reflections, the open air of a man who relinquishes — a little — control. Never completely, never for very long, never without being able to return to it promptly, refusing the abandon of his heroes who are overwhelmed and drowned by their feelings. This is the first time his photographs have been exhibited outside of Korea.
Soli-Sombre
Pooya Abbasian
July 6 to October 4 2026
The project presented this summer by Pooya Abbasian is the fruit of a deep immersion carried out during his residency at Lee Ufan Arles. It is within this privileged framework of reflection and production that the artist drew the raw material for his new research, absorbing the specificities of the Arles territory to explore the migration of living things.
At the heart of his approach is the baccharis, a plant that crystallises the tensions between nature and human intervention. Once imported for its ornamental qualities, this shrub is today perceived as a threat to local reeds.
This search for metaphors on adaptation is enriched by a dive into local intangible heritage through the tale of La Bête du Vaccarès. This narrative, staging the encounter between a guardian and a mythological creature exiled in the marshes, becomes for Pooya the symbol of a wild nature that is hunted out of fear of otherness. He envisions a reinterpretation in which video, multilayer prints, and organic matter intertwine to explore our own relationship to the unknown.
Informations
Address: 5 Rue Vernon 13200 Arles, France
Park Chan-wook exhibition's poster
Pooya Abbasian exhibition's poster