Laurence Aëgerter

Arithmetik der fotografischen Wahrnehmung

 

20.05. - 08.07.2017

 

 

Le Louvre and Hermitage, The Modernists (2008/2011)

Life-size staged photographs of people standing in front of iconic paintings in the Louvre Museum, Paris. Aëgerter’s Louvre photographs deal with a normal situation which is re-enacted outside the opening hours. The photographs have not been Photoshopped or manipulated in any way. The encounters are potential realities resulting from observations and earlier experiences with the Catalogue des Chefs-d’oeuvre du Musée du Louvre. The observers of Aëgerter’s photographs might identify with the spectators. What are we looking at?

 

Just as in Le Louvre and Het Apparaat, Laurence Aëgerter joined iconic works from The Modernists exhibition in the Hermitage to the spectators of these works to form a new, layered, reality. She also combined the works of art with objects like a dried ham that makes Van Dongen’s French lady look like a cancan dancer, or a fly curtain, that gives an interesting perspective to Matisse’s Red Room. The red and blue stickers on the stairs that Aëgerter staged in front of a Kandinsky merge wonderfully well with the colourful elements of his Composition VI. A salient detail: when looking at the original iconic works of art, after having studied Aëgerter’s images at length, we may have the unsettling experience that something is missing.

 

 

Healing Plants for Hurt Landscapes (2015)

This series of photographs is the result of Herbarium Cataplasma, a twofold community art project that Laurence Aëgerter developed at the invitation of the city of Leeuwarden in Friesland, the Netherlands. Aëgerter led a careful reconstruction of the plan of the medicinal garden of the medieval Abbey of Saint Gall on an unused plot of land in Leeuwarden, which was once part of a convent. This project was realized in collaboration with the local residents. Aëgerter also invited the residents for a symbolical healing ritual of destroyed landscapes. She selected 100 images by searching the web for photographs of disasters created by nature and man throughout the world. Participants were invited to treat the photographs of destroyed landscapes with the medicinal plants from their newly built garden, with appropriate herbal therapies (e.g. cannabis for anxiety relief or ginger against pain from burns).

 

 

Photographic Treatment (2016-2017)

This project explores the effects of images on people suffering from senile dementia, and particularly Alzheimer’s. Conducted in collaboration with neurologists, gerontologists and psychologists, this research aims to provide a therapeutic tool based on images, in order to improve the wellbeing of patients. Laurence Aëgerter’s work is based on recent scientific studies, which demonstrate that viewing images and manipulating printed photographs can have a positive impact on patients by stimulating their cognitive functions. The images are silkscreened with fragrances like soap, kummel and lavender.

Photographic Treatment© is the recipient of the International photographic Nestlé Prize Photo Festival Images, Vevey (CH)

With the generous support of Zorgbalans; Amstelring; GGZinGeest; Stichting Art in Societies; Stichting Stokroos; Fonds Sluyterman van Loo; Stichting RCOAK; Pius-Stichting; BankGiro Loterij Fonds; Huize Plantage; Stichting de Zaaier; Mondrian Fund; Fondation Beau Séjour, Vevey and the Nestlé Prize of Festival Images Vevey.

 

 

Tristes Tropiques: illustrations hors texte (2014)

The images from the seminal publication Tristes Tropiques by the French cultural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss are the source of this project. These photographs of Brazilian tribes were re-enacted 80 years later in Beesterzwaag, a village in the Dutch province of Friesland. This project was realised in close collaboration with the inhabitants of Beesterzwaag (NL). This project resulted in an artist’s books and a series of autonomous photographs. Using this ‘counter exploration’ through space and time, the continuity of human expression and cultural exchange is emphasized.

 

 

Cathédrales

Cathédrales is a series of photographs drawn from Aëgerter’s artist’s book of the same name, based on a spread of the cathedral in Bourges from a book published in the 1950s by the ministry of tourism to promote spiritual architecture in France. Aëgerter photographed this image over 100 times to capture the shadow of the window in her studio as it gradually covered the reproduction until the cathedral vanished into darkness. While the book engages the viewer to interact with the passing of time, the large-scale of the photographs (63.5 x 100 cm) underline the monumentality of the subject. Each unique print reflects the idea that every single image in the book is, in the words of the artist, a “small monument to Time”. In her work, Aëgerter investigates strategies and invents systems to give new meaning to existing images – both historical and contemporary sources from our shared memory bank.

 

Laurence Aëgerter lives and works in Amsterdam and Marseille.

 

 

 

Solo Exhibitions (selection)

2016

Photographic Treatment ©, Art Affairs Gallery, Amsterdam (NL)

Photographic Treatment ©, Festival Images Vevey, as recipient of the Nestlé International Photo Prize (CH).

2015

Herbarium Cataplasma, Fries Museum, Leeuwarden (NL).

Works in textile, Galerie Maud Barral, Nice (FR).

Cathédrales, RVB Books Gallery, Paris.

Laurence Aegerter Textile, Les visiteurs du soir, Agnes B, Nice.

2014

Cathédrales, Art Affairs Gallery Amsterdam.

2013

The Modernists and More, Hermitage Museum Amsterdam.

2012

Révélations, Galerie de la Ferronnerie, Paris.

2011

Hermitage, The Modernists, Art Affairs Gallery, 2×2 projects Gallery in collaboration with C&H art space, Amsterdam.

Laurence Aëgerter, Photographies et Tapisseries, Galerie Maud Barral, Nice (FR).

Staged Realities, Johan Deumens Gallery, Leipzig (DE).

2010

Le Louvre, MAMAC (Museum for modern and contemporary art), Nice (FR).

Seek & Hide, Museum van Loon, Amsterdam.

Tristes Tropiques: illustrations hors texte, in collaboration with Ronald van Tienhoven,

Kunsthuis SYB, Beetsterzwaag (NL).

2009

Appropriations, Institut Néerlandais, Paris.

Opening Soon / Opening Now, Residency RED A.I.R. Amsterdam.

An Alphabetical Index of Some of the Stories, Residency CBK Zuidoost, Amsterdam.

A.E.G.E.R.T.E.R., 2×2 projects Gallery, Amsterdam.

 

 

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