In this exhibition, Isabelle Cornaro presents an aspect of her artistic practice that remains little known. In a carefully elaborated staging, these short video or animation films, shot in 16mm and of great visual density, plunge us into a chimerical universe. Through a game of sequencing in space, they respond to each other, creating a narrative that unfolds within the two rooms of the Foundation.
With games of interlocking and references, between abstraction and figuration, between moving images and freeze-frames, Isabelle Cornaro multiplies the impressions and sensations, which will gradually overwhelm the viewer. The latter is absorbed by a device in which the material exceeds the subject. For she thinks of her long fixed shots or her simple panoramas as a visual and silent score. This aspiration to silence which could be close to memento mori is prolonged by furtive and dazzling apparitions. White shadows? The artist, in fact, explores expressionist plays of light, which transform each of his sequences into a succession of images that are like blown, lightning, unstable.
With this installation of immediate effectiveness, Isabelle Cornaro takes a critical look at a certain representation of the world, its media coverage, and our (in)ability to see. What is our relationship to violence? to reality? to the visible? These questions, implicit and recurrent in Isabelle Cornaro’s work, are manifest in these videos, which are a matter of sampling. They give back to the image its shadowy side, reveal its changing status and finally explore its reverse. They also incite to a reflection on the overexposure of the world where the tyranny of the visible reigns. And in the face of the din of our world, Isabelle Cornaro underlines the urgency of reconsidering – with restraint and silence – the role and place of our gaze.
Mouna Mekouar
