La certitude
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Rien n’est parfait
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Accueil
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Etant donné le voisinnage (d’aprés Marcel Duchamps)
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La continuité
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At the age of sixty-five Gilbert Garcin retired from his lamp-making business in Marseille and took up photography. There is a common expectancy that a contemporary artist has to be young to be innovative, this is not the case. Garcin’s work is just as fresh as someone young, but he has the advantage of informing his work with his wisdom and experience. His nostalgic ‘lifetime of narrative’ explores and shares his questions and view on life with others. He states ‘This is the principal and most profound reason I take photographs. I am not out to demonstrate something. My sole motivation stems from the need I feel – that we all feel, to varying degrees – to communicate with the world around us.’
His playful, humorous, black and white photomontages create a miniature world, a ‘little inner theatre’ based on the idea of ‘the absurdity of the human condition’ by ‘making works out of tiny stories that recycle personal defeats and failures’. Garcin introduces a character onto the ‘stage’ naming him ‘Mr. Everyone’. He is ‘the man who is an image’- Literally. This, like Anthony Gormley, is always himself. Garcin photographs himself in different positions and then cuts these out and places them in his small handmade set. It is fascinating how his small scale depictions can successfully capture the bigger ideas of philosophy. Interestingly, his work has been used to illustrate philosophy textbooks. He plays an ‘anonymous hero’ for us to identify with, providing a universal display of our own traits which in turn, encourages us to think about our humanity. It is more about the ‘preposterous idea of making his thoughts visible’ rather than forcing his opinion on the audience: ‘I’m not trying to get a message across with my images. I’m not saying “this is the way things are” but rather, “this is the way I feel them”.’ (edit from Research on a Contemporary Artist by Rachel Spencer Smith read more)
it is what it is 