CYRILLE DE VIGNEMONT
Since his first exhibitions, Cyrille de Vignemont’s (b.1970) work attracted attention in contemporary art world, from the Museum Of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, to the Museum of Modern Art PS1 while his experimental films and very personal music videos have been screened at the British Film Institute in London, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and at the American Film Institute in L.A.
His sensorial narratives encapsulate ephemeral moments, recollections of those instants when we feel connected to everything around us. This search for the impossible is perhaps what gives these images their abstract tension as they wallow in light.
As a contemporary artist, I use photography and sometimes direct short films to express myself, looking for rather simple things, trying to find something essential, far from the spectacle. I often travel, mostly in nature, but I live in Paris.
Cyrille, thank you for joining us today, despite these trying and uncertain times, we appreciate your time. Pls tell us about your greatest inspirations or influences?
I came to images with painting first, even before cinema or photography, and this obsession always comes back to me. I have sort of traced backwards the current of contemporary art, starting from the most abstract and contemporary works to progressively growing to like the figurative paintings of the past centuries.
Tell us a bit about your creative process?
Everything often starts with a memory, rarely precise, rather vague, blurred, and I try to find a way to express it. Some of my series tell slightly fragmented stories while others are closer to formal or abstract research, inspired by sensations, very simple elements : the shape of a head on a pillow, a face, trees in the wind….
I mostly try to create sensory narrations. Then, you have to keep on the look-out and let things happen…
I started almost by accident, I would travel with a camera and rolls I bought when I happened to find some, I did not even develop them, they were piled up in a sports bag. I simply tried to capture what touched me. Of course, when developed, most of the images were blurred, dark, or burnt but some of them still contain the motifs that are still present today in my work.
I try to play on the scale ratio, being very close or very far, to make things look either tangible or abstract. That’s why I am so much interested in the line between dream and reality; besides, my last project is called In Summer’s Arms and it is the front cover and a series of thirty pages of Somewhere’s book entitled Remember Summer, a collection of photos celebrating summer, by fourteen of their favorite international photographers.
How has the pandemic affected your creativity and how do you see the world changing?
The pandemic has been curiously linked to the project, I went to Lake Powell, travelling across Utah and Arizona. I think it was also quite an important moment in my life and I wanted to tell my first love story, when I was seventeen. Originally, there was a particular sensation, that of having held a butterfly in my hand, the touch of its wings brushing my palm, and being aware that it would probably cause its death: I connected this impression to the fleeting aspect of moments and to photography itself. I absolutely wanted a butterfly in my series, and we got it, or rather the reflection of the butterfly, I was very close to it, and it flew away, just when I pressed the shutter button, but its reflection remained distinct. I kept this impression of fragility, fleetingness, and beauty inside me during the whole pandemic, like a summary of our existences.
Who do you consider to be an icon of our time?
I do not believe in icons, only in souls.
What does wellbeing mean to you, and what do you practice?
A practice I discover from day to day, by accident, for example I came back from the North of Sweden just a few days ago, the temperature was minus 25 degrees Celsius, I spent days walking through the forests or along a river until I reached the frozen sea around Kalix and yet I never felt the cold, except in the face sometimes, and after I would fall asleep immediately, and this sleep was absolutely perfect….