Lucien Bitaux
Les liminaux / Métamorphose de l’être en sa vision - Installation - 2020
presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 22
Installation
Les liminaux describes what resides at the threshold of perception: visible, but only just; invisible, but palpable. The eye, that which sees, serves as the metaphor for the liminal dimension. A photograph is the addition of a lens and of the world behind it; the lens makes the world appear without showing itself. This work on perception and the relativity of the gaze attempts to make appear that which makes seeing possible, which here are called seers (voyants).
A selection of “entoptic” lenses was conceived: they leave clues to their presence in the photographs. The aim then is to make captures via these seers and to show the little world that they present. The liminals thus study what sees, what looks, in order to experiment with seers and seeables. These new instruments of vision and the images they record construct the seer’s doubt when confronted with the real. This working procedure is structured into four stages:
- approach
- shrink
- show
- relate
Nourished by the phenomenology of perception, this research produces ways of seeing and interrogates the seer-seen, in the manner of the feeling-felt. Several experiences of vision are presented, each one corresponding to a particular world: sometimes it is a matter of under-seeing or over-seeing, in a tension between a precarious real and an imperious real.
Lucien Bitaux
Born in 1995, Lucien Bitaux is the creator of Scoposcopy, a discipline that seeks to represent dimensions beyond our perception. His approach is based on making his own instruments. Since 2020, he is working on a thesis in artistic creation co-surpervised by Nathalie Delbard and Melik Ohanian placing astronomical visualizations and contemporary photographic experiments in a common iconographic field: exploratory imagery. At exhibitions and conferences, he discusses these subjects many artists and scientists such as Joan Fontcuberta and astrophysicist Jean-Philippe Uzan.
Production
Acknowledgments
Valérie Jouve; Élodie Wattiaux; the Parc Régional d’Armorique — Delphine Kermel; municipality of Ouessant — Marie-Noëlle Miniou; Pauline Delaplace; Cyprien Quairiat and the installations team; Olivier Anselot; Aurélie Brouet; Cédric Martinez; Boris Rogez; François Bonenfant; Louise Déry; Christophe Boulanger; Pascale Pronnier; and all the people who lent this exploration their gaze.
