LOUVIERE + VANESSA  |  ARCHIVE

artists' statements

  • Oblivion Atlas

    The Oblivion Atlas, a collaboration between Louviere+Vanessa and Michael Allen Zell, features photographs, short stories, vignette illustrations, and a book design by Jeff Louviere no less sublime than its contents.

     

    The book first came about as a constraint determined by Zell from the initial lines of Jacques Prevert’s To Paint A Portrait Of A Bird (“First paint a cage/with an open door”), secondly by the attempt at developing a corollary style of frozen-image writing as worthy counterpart to the hypnotic spells cast by photography and long takes in film, and ultimately by the specific influence and inspiration of L+V’s fertile decade of photographic art. The second ballast was formed by Louviere + Vanessa’s visual response to the context of lost souls in crisis and finding one’s way rather than visually repeating actions already described.

     

    The Oblivion Atlas explores and accumulates an aviary of themes, including dreams; time-sculpting; memory; madness; resistance; nihilism; the frequencies and trajectories of the mind; absorbing/dissolving; and infinity in a finite space. New Orleans remains a steady companion throughout, as an active guiding presence treated in a singular manner. This book is precise but not taut, assertive but not doctrinaire, ambitious but not exclusive, inviting the reader in by its very design and the affirmation that

    “…the first act of freedom is when the mind says no and the second when it says yes.”

  • We're Wolves

    Anthropomorphism...

    Its universal history has helped religions control, cultures survive, myths guide us and people understand their place in nature for centuries.

     

    But, there exists a more personal narrative. The Louviere family has a bit of a history in 17th century France. One in which we discovered includes an entry in the Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology. There was a trial, a burning, and a family crest with a black wolf on a field of silver that reads Lupus de Fabula–which in modern parlance is "speak of the devil..."

     

    We made these works as a combination of our love of art and animals. Vanessa and I have spent the last 16 years being raised by wolves. It grounds us in what is really important in this world.

     

    It is amazing that in the history of mankind the wolf/man relationship is the only one of its kind to exist. And making these images—as absurd, romantic or scary as they may be — signifies a more human condition by contrast.

     

    Most of the images are printed on mirrors and encased in resin–a logical symbol of reflection and projections of our time with animals. Some images are also printed on glass with a silver leaf or silver paint base–another symbol playing out between creation and destruction. They are intimate in scale and scope. And like a good fable, a dream or a photograph, we get to experience the things that don’t exist.

  • Stratum Lucidum

    In John Dryden’s 17th century play called “All Your Love” Antony says:

     

    “They look on us at a distance, and, like curs scraped from the lions paws, they bay far off

    and lick their wounds, and faintly threaten war”.

     

    Stratum Lucidum is latin for the “clear layer” of skin, this series represents what is hidden behind the clear layer.

  • Counterfeit

    This new series is an examination of the artistic impulse. Its excitement is in the challenge of a tactile and visceral discovery of art making that is inspired by the quotidian. It is painting’s inherent detachment from the world to which photography is intrinsically bound that these works exist to relate only to themselves.

     

    Counterfeit explores intersections between realism in photography with the expressionistic aspects of painting and the abstractionist possibilities inherent in both. We are inspired by Rauschenberg’s idea of  “working within the gap between life and art”. We explore the tension between photography and painting, realism and abstraction.

     

    We are seeking the essence of multiple mediums. We use the mechanics of photography to record directly and the nature of the paint, gold and paper to express the hand of the artist. We draw from the methods of realism to scrutinize, expressionism to exaggerate and abstraction to formalize and create a fundamentally visual experience.

     

    The content of Counterfeit is of particular interest to us. These images are exaggerated photographs of world currency that distill the value that countries place on their histories and culture. We find the secular canonization of politicians, a reverence of animals and the celebration of artists and poets. It fascinates us to see the similarities shared by countries that are culturally and politically polar when they choose to filter their histories onto a few square inches of paper.

     

    Counterfeit maintains a parallel to our past work in dealing with concepts of integration through disintegration, while it departs from our traditional subject matter and adds the element of color. We see it as nostalgic absurdity—a pataphysical solution—two degrees separated from reality. Like the current evolution of money through the advent of technology we re-contextualize the (arguably) most ubiquitous form of art, pushing currency further into oblivion.

  • Folie á Deux

    In regards to the cinégraph, we have tried to embrace, expand and challenge the history of photography and filmmaking. We devised this new technique as a way to come full circle–so to speak–from our photographic beginnings which inspired our film making and back again to these experimental films/photos creating new ways of seeing through the destruction of the medium. We shoot the photographs with super 8mm film in 3,550 individual stills, the works become both a projected motion picture and a still image made up of the deconstructed strips of film.

     

    Our goal was to create a new kind of diptyh based on pairing opposites:

         motion and stillness

         abstract and representational

         linear and repetitive

         proverbial and mysterious

     

    We raise questions about the experience art creates depending on spatial and temporal methods. The integration arises from the disintegration of the medium. The representational still image is the destruction of the film while the abstract motion is the construction.

     

    It represents shifts in seeing, one with the mind and one with the brain.

  • Instinct/Extinct

    Nearly every living thing is affected by instincts-except humans.

    Ours are gone. The closest thing we inherit are drives: eros and destruction.

     

    We created this series using both. We let our drives take over with each image relating to the previous as a tangent creating a felt possible reality like an hallucination that involves all the senses and lets the viewer be a participant. The audience is the dénouement based on their desires based on their memories–individually and collectively.

     

    We let brute sense and intellect intersect-sometimes canceling each other out, sometimes

    compounding-merging form and content to let the works turn in on themselves. The photos have been deconstructed, some in execution, some in concept, some temporally, and some spatially.

     

    The mixing of process has always had a profound effect on us. This time we’re adapting a nearly extinct form of photography to 21st century methods. Gold is malleable, conductive and universally important. We are exploring the idea that the medium of photography is more important than any one photo because the radical mechanics of photography has caused us to consider the making of images. We’ve taken the raw materials, changed variables and given them new possibilities within the realm of photography.

     

    Bears hibernate, ants divide labor,

    humans make art

     

    and art serves itself.

     

  • Overawe

    “... but in sadness like mine nothing stirs – new buildings, old neighborhoods turn to allegory, and memories weigh more than stone.” — Baudelaire

     

    We have lived in New Orleans for many years. And we’ve had a love/hate relationship all the while. This place has always been a bit of a fixer upper, the politicians are ter- rible and the streets usually smell funny.

    But, there is plenty of beauty in the strangest places. We are constantly being surprised by some odd goings on or impromptu happening. New Orleans is a heaven for those who like ghosts and architecture. It’s a Mecca for the self driven. We live in a city where self expression goes unchecked. And some of the most loyal friends on earth are made here. We really don’t feel ourselves anywhere else.

    Now, after the storm, the city is showing some beauty in the most astonishing ways. One way is the redefining of “community” into a fierce and constructive force of which the word has rarely been attributed.

    Another way is the surreal and terrible mixing of the natural and the man-made. Chaos taken to an absurd degree and coming full circle into amazing fits of pairings and compositions.

    In knowing how close we came to losing everything, – we live only a few blocks from one of the levee breaks; we were on the lucky side – these images are first and foremost for us so that we never forget.

  • Creature

    We were born in the age of reason. But, we live in New Orleans. Time here has no context, the whole city is like a photograph, frozen in an old moment, but continually aging. It is this contradiction of time and place that surrounds us when we make photographs.

    We re-invent reality. We create what we think we see.

     

    The subjects for the series are what we think of as a universal “creature”. What we found suggested the symbols and goals of photography itself – stopping time, preserving, idolizing, explaining and mystifying.

     

    The first stage of our creature photos began as outsiders looking in. We lived with them, set them up and like a crime scene began moving around them, studying their form and finding every angle. We were seeking personalities. We shot them inside, outside, lit with every available light source. We primarily use Holgas, but other, more expensive cameras were occasionally employed. In essence, we ran it like an experiment; the creatures being the only constant.

     

    Our second stage takes the discoveries of each creature’s personality and, like insiders looking out, we create new realities – fictions of each creature and the characters they can portray. They are becoming more narrative but still maintain an associative nature.

     

    The way these images are interpreted is dependent on individual history and experience. Some see contorted creatures, sad and lonely, trying to be accepted for what they are, yet too alien to ever have a chance. Classic Frankenstein. Other people may see beautiful but strange creatures that are totally at peace. It’s this ambiguity, which gives viewers ample room for interpretation, that has begun asking more questions of us than they answer.

     

    Our style has evolved from working in print making, painting, photography and the conviction that the negative itself is sacred. We now try to avoid the preciousness usually associated with the production and presentation of photography. There’s no “white glove” approach. To that end, we begin with the destruction of the negative. We wax, stain with blood, crush and tear the final print. We also print the images at large sizes, again negating their preciousness. There are editions to each piece, but in order to maintain an organic feel, no two are exactly alike in size or color. The prints are made on Japanese handmade paper in order to mimic the color and texture of the creatures as well as give an extra sense of the artists’ hand. And like the old adage that every picture tells a story, our photos also have a tail.

  • Chloroform

    Light as an energy source. Photosynthesis as the context of our symbiotic relationship with our environment–accidental light and its conversion into an integral benefit. “Chloroforms” is the synthesis of elusive ideas into art. Ancient imitative magic, historically used to embody the attributes of animals, behaving as they hoped nature would behave, is more specifically about manipulating the uncontrollable truth of life feeding on life.

     

    “Philosophically speaking, the Chloroforms series is related to Creature but this particular world is populated by humanoid characters with appendages that make them look unsettlingly alien. As with Creature, we respond to these images with a flood of similar questions. We feel awkward around these beings because they are not like us. We may even feel an impulse to reject them altogether so we don’t have to deal with them. But after spending some time in their presence, we begin to realize that these are lost souls that want nothing more than friendship. Like Frankenstein, they are destined to be outsiders, and even with the best of intentions, there may be little we can do to reach out to them.”  – Gerhard Bock, artist

  • Slumberland

    “If functions can be given any meaning in art, then our art’s function is the testing of personal observations, convictions, and moods through our ability to communicate them–to make the personal universal, and vice versa. By collaborating, we put ourselves in the midst of alternating currents of decision and production, action and responsibility, decay and clarity–capturing the moment between ‘has been’ and ‘what will be.’”

     

    Their art begins, as many good stories do, with the word. It may be angel or leaf, fire or perhaps geometry. The project of collaboration—like  the project of marriage—starts with a conversation, an enjoining of two visions, and a cleaving, in both meanings of the word. They marry two sensibilities, then invite in the necessary uncertainty and unpredictability of creation. In the forge of conversation, an idea is born; in the crucible of the creative act, the idea is alchemized into a new—and sometimes unforeseen—entity.

     

    Louviere + Vanessa’s photographs strip away the parameters of time, removing the benefit of that way of contextualizing and defining what the viewer sees. Instead, the images emerge as archetypes or shards of myth: deeply personal tableaux  that challenge the viewer to enter the conversation. For them, the more personal the image, the more universal are the potential responses to it. By distressing and abusing the final negatives, they re-impose time (through the process of disintegration and decay) onto the time-less picture; like myth, the final product is both ancient and breathtakingly new.

     

    The work of Louviere + Vanessa is unabashedly narrative and borrows from stories, dreams, and the collective human unconscious. Like authors, they dress and pose their characters then set them loose to fill their particular created universe. Their subjects converse with the camera and with their settings; like the traditional tableaux vivants, they are at once more universal and more individual in their stylized setting than they could be in the fog of the everyday.

           —Annie Wedekind, Editor–FSG books, NYC