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A new milestone in the artist’s trajectory, the show “Modulations Domestiques” presents from April 16 to June 4, 2022 at Danysz Paris - Marais, the evolution of the work of Charles Pétillon in recent years, as a growing emphasis was placed on sculpture. While his previous exhibitions at Danysz gallery allowed us to get acquainted with a poetic universe involving enigmatic white balloons in environments often devoid of human presence, with this new artistic proposition spanning original photographs and suspended light sculptures, the artist brings about a yet unexplored “point of view,” to paraphrase the title of a work, offering to the visitors an immersive and luminous experience of its own.
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Charles Pétillon, Cirrocumulus 31, 2022expanding on architecture
“Modulations Domestiques” marks a major shift in the artist’s œuvre, with renewed underlying ideas. Whereas his invasions, as he calls them, used to play on accumulation and saturation, pushing boundaries of space and objects, his recent works rely on interaction. Their intent is to expand on architecture, engaging into a dialogue with it and underlining its specificities. The forms are becoming more structured, organized, sometimes even going towards refined lines.
Building on the same minimalistic motif of the white sphere, Charles Pétillon enlarges his scope of intervention, moving from photographic set ups to physical, lasting installations with delicate shapes designed to be part of an interior. These new domestic- sized works are in line with many in situ projects set in cities like Beijing, Macau, Bordeaux, and more recently at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport with a monumental creation now hanging in one of the terminals.
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Charles Pétillon, Installations in Public Spaces
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"These balloon invasions are metaphors. Their purpose is to change our perspective on things that we encounter every day without paying attention." - Charles Pétillon
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Charles Pétillon, Altocumulus 23 (with light), 2022
Aerial Sculptures
The white balloons used by Charles Pétillon in his photographic installations have been staged in various contexts. But on several occasions, he has shown them in an airborne manner (Cloud Computing, Mutations, Ribambelles series...). It is in this same spirit that these aerial sculptures, evocative of clouds as much by their forms as by their names, are designed.
The history of modern and contemporary sculpture has been punctuated by many efforts seeking to liberate sculpture from the constraint of weight and to break away from traditional methods of presentation in favor of vertical hanging. From Alexander Calder to Ernesto Neto, many artists have thus sought throughout the 20th century to give their works a more aerial dimension. It is in this tradition that Charles Pétillon is involved with these suspended sculptures.
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Charles Pétillon, The Cloud, 2018, Installation at Vanke Times Center, Beijing - China
From the Ephemeral to the Perennial
Influenced by Land art, artistic movement of the 1960s where nature itself is used as a component of the artwork, Charles Pétillon thought for a long time that the ephemeral nature of his installations was the only way to preserve their gentleness and poetry, and that switching to more permanent works would bring them back to their ordinary status as objects. His first creations of lasting, monumental works finally convinced him that this was not the case.
By creating independent installations in the public space, Charles Pétillon has freed himself from the photographic dimension of the work. By moving from the ephemeral to the perennial, forms and materials have also evolved. If the basic element of the artist’s plastic vocabulary remains the same, it now takes the form of solid white polyethylene spheres rather than inflated latex balloons.
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"I really want people to feel like they are able to interact with my photography in the same way as they would with the installations themselves. The audience can interact with the buildings and spaces – when they step inside they can feel the installation, they can walk around it, walk underneath it, and understand the depth of feeling I am trying to express."
- Charles Pétillon -
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"All my works start with an idea I want to express, and from there I move on to try and find the best location to express that idea. In this way, the location works as an indirect dialogue. It can take me up to three years to find the right place, and my work is very time specific. The right idea in combination with the right location is the most important aspect in all of my works." - Charles Pétillon
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Charles Pétillon, Activités de plein air 2 (small), 2018 - Photography
The Art of Visual Haiku
Charles Pétillon excels in what we might call the art of visual haiku. With the short Japanese poems, his creations share the same inclination toward capturing a moment, toward the concise evocation of the elusive nature of the world, and the same deceptive simplicity. In his photographic installations, all that remains is the silence that follows man’s departure and his absence.
One could say that the intention of the artist is to highlight the imprint of man on his environment, the complex relationships between nature and society. To highlight, and not to decipher nor to give away. A world in suspension then appears, where things are not yet definite but purposely maintained as potentialities. A world in suspension that reaches out beyond the works themselves and extends over time, and in the mind of the viewer.
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"I create every installation with the photograph in mind. I create the installations in order to provide a point of view, so I often use a front facing and central framing in order to ensure the audience can’t escape from what I am trying to show."
- Charles Pétillon
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Charles Petillon,Mutations 1 (Large), 2014 - Photography
photographic installations
Each of Charles Pétillon’s photographs is the result of a long process. They are not simple images captured instantly by the camera, but installations that the photographer sets up in order to obtain a scene where each element participates in the whole. It would certainly be more accurate to speak of photographic installations, which seek to bring to consciousness incongruities, odd circumstances, paradoxes of our time.
His site specific interventions are akin to poetic, enigmatic and neatly articulated statements. They seek to bring to consciousness incongruities, odd circumstances, paradoxes of our time.
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Born in 1973, Charles Pétillon is a French artist known for his creations at the crossroad of photography, installations and sculpture. His works have been presented in many important institutions such the Maison de la Photographie in Lille, France, the Sinnka Museum in Kerava, Finland, or the Times Art Museum in Beijing. Often solicited for projects in the public space, his large-scale in situ works include monumental installations at the Covent Garden in London, in Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport, at the National Opera in Bordeaux, or in the French department Eure during Heritage Days 2021. He lives in Saint-Amand-les-Eaux, France.
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Modulations Domestiques,
