2008

The Film Gallery, Paris

The Film Gallery was established in Paris in September 2005 by Re:Voir Vidéo Publishing. It is devoted to the exhibition, showing and selling of artists’ films, principally in silver-gelatin format and aims to bring together a unique collection of experimental cinema. It also exhibits artists whose work is related to the moving image.

Cinematographer and video artist Christian Lebrat (born in 1952 in Paris) has completed some twenty films, videos and performances since 1976. Highly inspired by abstract expressionist painting on one hand, and the radicalism of Peter Kubelka’s films (whose first monograph he published) on the other, Christian Lebrat’s films can be identified by the way in which his images decompose into particles (strips of light) that explode the image frame, creating uniquely colored moments of intensity. He began photography at around the same time as cinema and has completed numerous projects, such as Rubans Photographiques (“Photographic Ribbons”), Rideaux (“Curtains”) and Autoportraits (“Self-portraits”). More recently, he has returned to performance art and has introduced a technique of painting directly onto film, in addition to building a body of video works in the form of projections and installations. For Art-O-Rama, The Film Gallery has chosen to continue its exploration of the way in which the filmic medium occupies its space. To this end, the gallery will be presenting a film and projected images from a body of work by cinematographer and fine artist Christian Lebrat.

The architect and set-designer Rémi Dumas-Primbaut and Christian Lebrat have created an original concept-stand that brings together a construction in the form of a projection room called La Cabine (“The Cabin”) and an extension created for Christian Lebrat’s photographic work. This installation will thus bring together two of the artist’s previously unseen works: a new 16mm film entitled Autoportrait Modifié (“Modified Self-Portrait”) as well as a large-format photographic series entitled “Myria”, which will be shown here for the first time and completes the artist’s explorations on the theme of the human body.

http://re-voir.com/gallery