VALERIE BELIN, S/t, 1997

At first it was the sun. Valérie Belin photographed this heavenly body emitting rays of light. Then she took an interest in all the surfaces that, intercepting these rays of light, reflect them or let them pass through, but in no event retain them.

In fact, the artist works through series, selecting an object or group of objects each time: glass showcases, lustre, glass vases, silverware, glass animals. Their transparent or reflective material would seem to be the only thing they have in common, but giving it careful thought, they all share almost the same way of not containing things. These empty containers, these signifiers that all have the same meaning between parentheses, point to a new meaning which is established in each series which is absence. In a certain sense, the transparency or reflection, these physical qualities of materials that let the waves of light pass through them or reflect them also evoke the notion of absence. In their inability to retain, the surfaces are to waves what containers are to content.

Whether in the large format versions presented at the Credac or in the specific commission by the Musée des Beaux Art et de la Dentelle (Museum of Fine Arts and Lace), the series that follows those that have been mentioned, the wedding dress series, brings out this absence. The wedding dresses are missing their brides. The wearer would not be missed as much in other dress, and this makes us wonder whether the series has to do with the wedding dresses themselves or the absence of women to marry. As for the 10 Ivry prints, 3.60 x 3 meter silkscreens, where the dresses are set out on the ground, and the six Calais prints, the 2.5 x 1.2 meter prints show the dresses in their boxes, ready to be put away or taken out. In both cases, someone has just taken off or put on the dress. Many interpretations could be made of this image, but despite the evidence of these very well connoting and evocative subjects, Valérie Belin incessantly leads us back to the photographs themselves. And there is a more certain relationship between the grandiose dimensions of the Ivry silkscreens, the choice of support, the framing and the way the cloth unfolds, than in the potential image that would come before or after these shots in an animated image.

But one could also counter what has been said and sustain that in all of Valérie Belin's early work, the only importance of these sun discs resides in evoking the framing. And in one of the very first series, the landing gear, we can already see the closed framing that the artist would go on to conserve throughout the series to come. Yet we should relate the treatment of this framing to the recurrence of reflecting surfaces which we spoke of before, because this relationship is found in series done as of 1997. This type of close framing around the figure tends to place the object in the forefront of the photograph and stamp out any notion of perspective. And the reflecting surfaces shatter the perception of a foreground and background within the picture ruling out any space for fiction. This bouncing off the surface of the photograph underscores its very flatness. In a similar way to how painting at the turn of the century took it upon itself to chase away of any illusion of a subject, perspective and anything else that could be placed in the background of the painting itself, Valérie Belin finds a way to constantly lead us back to the photograph itself, to what characterises its process through the light. (…)