SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- The Robert Koch Gallery presents Dislocation, the second installment of the Transition series by French artist Lauren Marsolier.
Marsolier’s photo-montages are assembled from imagery compiled by the artist at assorted geographical locations over spans of time and manifest surreal non-places where evidence of human activity is simultaneously present yet are devoid of inhabitants. Her crisply composed images of buildings and man-made landscapes bathed in otherworldly light suggest time has seemingly been paused. “Months or years often separate the capture of elements juxtaposed in my landscapes,” Marsolier explains. “This approach is not unlike that of the many painters who would make sketches at different locations to use as reference for their future paintings.” Marsolier uses her data bank of collected imagery to construct mysterious and psychologically imbued images that blur the distinction between the natural and fabricated.
Of her work Marsolier additionally remarks, “In a composite photograph, liberated from the single point of view of indexical representation, a new visual vocabulary can emerge. A subtle combination of multiple perspectives, lighting sources, and distances are used to produce disorientation in the viewer... The landscapes are ambivalent, familiar and yet not identifiable. The work constructs an experiential bridge between self and environment, blending the physical landscape with the landscape of the mind. It is a reflection of our world without being a direct representation of it.” Fittingly, critic George Melrod describes Marsolier’s work as “existing in a limbo-like, in-between state, between fiction and document, between virtual and physical.”
Marsolier currently lives and works in Los Angeles. In 2015 she was included in a panel discussion at the Tate Modern in London discussing contemporary landscape photography, along with fellow artists: Thomas Struth, Penelope Umbrico, Massimo Vitali, and Mishka Henner. Her work is included in the collections of institutions such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Center for Creative Photography, and the Phoenix Art Museum. Marsolier is the recipient of the 2013 Houston Center for Photography fellowship award, which included a solo exhibition of her work at the institution. In 2013, she was also featured alongside Mitch Epstein, Robert Adams, Simon Norfolk, Edward Burtynsky, and others, in the London exhibition Landmark: The Fields of Photography, curated by William Ewing at the Somerset House. She was also part of the Humble Art Foundation 2012 selection of 31 Women in Art Photography and was featured in the British Journal of Photography as one of 20 photographers to watch in 2013. Her 2015 monograph Transition published by Kerber Verlag received the International Photography Awards 2015 First Prize in the Fine Art Book category.
