Artistics at Fotofever Paris: between light and shade

For its fourth participation in Fotofever Paris, the international art fair dedicated to contemporary photography, Artistics presents a duo show with photographers Christian Houge (1972, Norway) and Xavier Dumoulin (1974, France), engaged in a dialogue between shade and light.

On the light side, Xavier Dumoulin’s series Incandescences: Xavier Dumoulin traveled from the Normandy coast to the Nice inland region during full moon nights to take high-angle shots of remote towns or villages. Transfigured by artificial lighting, the urban environments evoke molten lava flows. According to the photographer, “light which is supposed to comfort us has become an increasingly close-knit fence preventing us from seeing what is essential and maintaining us in a state of illusion”. These fascinating images explore the consequences of our desire to make day light last longer artificially: light pollution has become so ordinary that it removes from our eyes or even from our memories the sight of a starry night.

On the shade side, Christian Houge’s series Okurimono: in this series Houge has, through five trips to Japan (Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto), explored Japans otherworldly subculture and its ritualistic perfection. In this personal art documentary he has ventured into delicate themes such as personal identity, sexuality, longing and gender dysphoria. In this particular series, he uses staging as a method to create a story within a story. The viewers associations are important in meeting this work and ambiguity plays an important role. This series, shown in France for the first time, is part of the JAPONOGRAPHIE program that Fotofever has organized to celebrate the 160th anniversary of the France Japan diplomatic relations.

More about Xavier Dumoulin: https://www.artistics.com/en/xavier.dumoulin

More about Christian Houge: https://www.artistics.com/en/christian.houge