Olivier Sola
Sunset Pictures - Installation - 2019
presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 21
Installation
The installation Sunset Pictures is organised around three sets of images that look at the emblematic, universal and transversal theme of sunset. The photographic subject par excellence, it is synonymous both with beauty and with a certain idea of kitsch and vulgarity. The sunset has also been discussed in all fields from science to philosophy, and almost throughout art history. In Sunset Pictures Olivier Sola extends his artistic approach and explores the indexical nature of photography, in particular the way our perception of an object or subject is transformed simply by the act of taking the photograph. By bringing out the flatness of the photographic image, he also seeks to interrogate the porosity of the frontiers that this medium shares with painting, among others.
Three series of images are place in relation to this installation. Midnight Sunset, which is a set of images of skies sampled from around midnight in the polar circle, at the moment when the sky has ceased its descent below the horizon. Screenshots (Midnight Sunset) and Paper Prints (Midnight Sunset) use the images from this series and question the role of tools for producing and diffusing images that are the screen and paper in the construction of our perception of the real. The flatness of the surface of the screen, echoing that of the photographic images, and the folds and creases in paper intervene here as a form of resistance or attempt to resist this arbitrary condition.
Olivier Sola
Olivier Sola started his artistic career studying for a BA in visual arts at the Université de Rennes 2, while at the same time taking photography courses at the École Régionale des Beaux-Arts de Rennes. He later entered the École Nationale Supérieure de Photographie d’Arles and, during these studies, benefited from an exchange with the School of Visual Arts de New York. He entered Le Fresnoy – Studio National des Arts Contem-porains in Ooctober 2018. His work has been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions in various venues and events, notably the festival Les Rencontres Photographiques d’Arles, the Friche Belle de Mai in Marseille and the Nuits Photographiques festival in Paris.
