« In his text La leçon de la Sainte Victoire Peter Handke recalls that "when Cézanne was asked one day to describe what he meant by "motif", he "very slowly" brought the fingers spread open of both hands together, bent them and folded them".

Whether it is a question of paintings, drawings, photographs or moving images, the writing of motifs is always the workmanship of plaiting. Of trying to hold together the interactions of fields of heterogeneous impressions: indeed, the reality of the model, of the onlooker and the lesson of the darkroom do not overlap. Something unknown, obscure comes and fixes itself in superimposition in the gaps between what I see, what I thought I caught sight of in the frosted glass and the imprint which finally sees itself in the silver emulsion at the bottom of the black box. It is a lesson in opaqueness which reactivates the memory, suddenly haunted by the areas of impression already there.

The piece that I envisage is a small ceremonial arrangement which will weave a process of exchange between different mediums: graphic lines, traditional photos, projections and recordings of video sequences.

A work on the layers of the seizing of light and on the layers of its reception, just like a painter works on the materiality of the depth of the coloured expanse to try to seize something of its "feeling" (cf. Cézanne again).

Over exposing at least twice the silver print film, over laying patterns of the landscape photographed in natural light, and paintings and the model in the artificial light of the studio.

In the third instance (third thread of the plait), to show sequence shots filmed in the studio with the model, or a work at the editing table on photographs in order to try and open up the image to what it refuses: to reveal the trace of the incredible work of adaptation of the brain which wrangles with the pulling and tugging of what can't overlap. To try to show the whole depth, all the layers of the plane of desire..."

François Rouan