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Ange Leccia

Girls, Ghosts and War
09.22.18 - 10.27.18
Video installation — Maison Salvan (Labège)

© PRINTEMPS DE SEPTEMBRE

PHOTO: DAMIEN ASPE

© Ange Leccia, Girls, Ghosts and War, (video-still) HR, 2018

Ange Leccia is also presenting a screening at Maison Salva.

 

Associated Curator : Paul De Sorbier

Born in 1952 in Minerviu (Corsica), he lives and works in Paris and Corsica.

 

He created his video installation named Girls, Ghosts and War to occupy the whole of the Maison Salvan. Despite its conversion into an art center, the space remains aware of its domestic past, of which it conserves the intimate quality. Leccia's screenings fit into this intimacy, directly on the whitened surface of the walls, without an intervening screen. They are five distinct films – one central film and four satellite films – accompanied by a shared soundtrack.

 

They stem from a dive made by the artist into his archives. Scenes of everyday life, episodes shot during journeys abroad: from New York (1986) to Asia through the Middle East (Egypt, Damascus and Palmyra in Syria, in the 1990's and 2000's). Added to these fragments of personal film, pictures taken from digital traffic: wars in the Middle East, the Arab Spring or Japanese pop icon, model, actor and singer Rie Miyazawa. The moving portraits of young women filmed by Ange Leccia haunt the films that are saturated with images of the violence of the world. A double focal point, sentimental and objective, a double urgency of desire and horror. Girls, Ghosts and War plays on two scenes, two planes: the young women in the background are blurred by the double exposure of the pictures of conflict. Pictorial conflicts, here and there mixed up in this ghostly maelstrom. As if the affective memory was constantly engulfed by the commotion of history. These five screenings explore the artist's thought as much as the spectator's perception since his or her gaze composes and edits a meta film that starts over and over again.


After studying Fine Art, Ange Leccia committed to the double activity of artist and filmmaker. He began his research as resident of the Académie de France in Rome and was later a resident at the Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto. He taught in Grenoble and Cergy's art schools before being named director of the Palais de Tokyo's research lab, Le Pavillon in 2000. His work has been shown at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, at the Centre Georges-Pompidou in Paris and in Metz, at the Guggenheim in New York, at the Documenta in Kassel, at the Venice Biennale etc. He presented a monographic exhibition in 2013 at the MAC/VAL in Vitry as at the Palais de Tokyo in 2014 and the HAB in Nantes (2016). In 2017 he was granted a retrospective at the National Gallery in Reykjavik.

Exhibition realised in partnership with La Maison Salvan and the city of Labège.