SEPTEMBER 17 - OCTOBER 24
Opening Reception for Éliane Excoffier’s “Kiev” Thursday, September 17, 5-8PM
Artist Talk with Éliane Excoffier: Saturday, September 19th, 2-3pm. RSVP as seating is limited.
The gallery is pleased to present “Kiev”, a new series of photographic work by Éliane Excoffier, which addresses the provocative history of eroticism.
Éliane Excoffier’s (b. St. Jerôme, Québec, 1971) work continues to be inspired by the culmination of two passions. Her intrigue in the representation of the female body and the investigation of photography’s historical processes and techniques are juxtaposed to create this most recent body of work. The subjects in Excoffier’s photographs are not identified as particular women, but fragments of the female body, as their concealed faces render them anonymous. Inpsired by erotic imagery of the early 20th century, “Kiev” uses classical representations of sexual desire and eroticism. Excoffier’s sensual images are largely influenced by the work of photographers John Ernest Joseph Bellocq (1873-1949), Pierre Molinier (1900-1976) and Carlo Mollino (1905-1973) who all made portraits of the fetishized female form.
Excoffier, a self-taught photographer, captures these female nudes in a series of twenty black and white photographs taken with a Kiev 60, a camera manufactured at the prime of the Soviet Union in the capital of Ukraine. She uses this medium format single lens reflex camera by creating her own paper negatives that are hand-cut to fit into the back. When printed, the delicate surface of the paper subtly references the past as the grain and imperfections of the hand made negatives are revealed. The long exposure times required for this technique create ghostly images of the female form as figures move within the frame. Excoffier offers the viewer a modern take on the voyeuristic images attributed to the early 20th century.
Excoffier lives and works in Montréal. She graduated with a degree in Visual Arts and Art History from the University of Montréal in 1996. Her work can be found in the collections of Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal; Loto-Québec, Montréal; Giverny Capital, Montréal; oeuvres d’art du Cégep de Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec; Fondation MontMartFund, Paris; Prêts d'oeuvres d'art du Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, Québec; amongst others.
“Kiev” was made possible with a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.
