Nicolas Claris  ·  Romain Claris  ·  2024

Fragments

Photography exhibition by Nicolas Claris
and film by Romain Claris
Model Sabrina Martello

Photo © Nicolas Claris — All rights reserved

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Introduction

SEEKO'O culture  ·  BAD+ / Art in the City

May 30 – June 2, 2024

54, quai de Bacalan — 33000 Bordeaux
+33 (0)5 56 39 07 07 — contact@seekoo-hotel.com
Free admission · 10am – 7pm

For the very first time, Nicolas Claris works in black and white, questioning his fragmentary memory to reveal a puzzle that can only remain unfinished. Simultaneously, Romain Claris draws inspiration from the oldest known Greek sculpture of Aphrodite, while reflecting on the capacity of artificial intelligence to create genuine beauty.

FRAGMENTS
Fragments of memory
Moments gone by
Fragments of stories
Bewitching whispers

Gallant wanderings
Ephemeral murmurs
Intertwined histories
Incandescent bodies

Ethereal vertigo
Elegant dream
Dissipated by the wind
Of light
Magical apparition
Mind that strays
Magnificent glimmers
That seize
Persistent memories

Delicate puzzle
In the shadow of time
Will never be complete

Nicolas Claris — December 2023
VENUSIA — A reflection on beauty.

Today, artificial intelligences generate new faces and new "perfect" bodies on demand.

VENUS.IA draws inspiration from the Aphrodite of Praxiteles at Cnidus, a statue considered the first female nude in the history of art and the first aesthetic canon.

Built like a puzzle, the shots attempt to assemble themselves as an AI would, searching for images to analyse. The film lingers on the movement of each part of the body searching for another part to form a coherent whole.

If the weakest element determines the quality of the whole, if each piece, each shot of this puzzle is objectively beautiful… should that not constitute a beautiful whole? But perhaps part of beauty lies precisely in the interstice, in the in-between, in the search itself.

Because as soon as all the pieces are in place and fit together, ready to embody this "beauty", something seems to be lost, the magic drifts away.

Must beauty remain in motion, so that each person can be invited to their own subjectivity? Must we keep building, searching, inventing our own beauty and freeing ourselves from these imposed aesthetic canons?

Romain Claris — December 2023
Gallery

The photographs

Signed prints, limited edition of 5.   Buy a print →

Video

« VENUSIA » — The film

Edited on five engraved, signed flash drives.
Buy one of the five copies →

The authors

Nicolas Claris

Nicolas Claris

Co-founder in 1993 of Claris Image Builder — Photographer

"It takes a lot of maritime knowledge to give each boat its most beautiful aspects. It takes a lot of technical knowledge to master the recent art of digital. It takes a lot of humility to serve your subjects, not use them. It takes a lot of energy to take on new challenges every year. It takes a lot of academicism to know how to break codes. It takes a lot of respect to avoid the easy way out. It takes a lot of love to make generous images. It takes a lot of open-mindedness to be a great artist." — Bruno Belmont, Product Development, Groupe Bénéteau

In 2008, Sinar entrusted him with an HY6 for a year of intensive testing under extraordinary conditions. Now addicted to medium format (large sensors), Nicolas Claris became one of Pentax's rare ambassadors from 2012 to 2021.

In 2022, he switched to even more technologically advanced Fujifilm equipment — still medium format, with a 102-megapixel sensor delivering exceptional colour and image quality.

Full biography Website
Romain Claris

Romain Claris

Claris Image Builder — Video Director

"If a wide angle shot is what we can all do, detail is what is lacking for our image-drowned eye with which we look at the world. Then, only then — the fold of fabric in a sewing machine, the stroke of a brush on a white page, drops of rain on a train window, the hand of a sculptor, a pebble becoming a jewel, the flexible foot of a dancer… all these things filmed by Romain Claris move us because they allow us to see a wider, richer, more complex world than we thought." — Jacques Dubuisson, Screenwriter, Director

Romain Claris has been creating short films since 2000, selected and awarded at over a hundred international film festivals. Graduate of the Conservatoire Libre du Cinéma Français in Paris, 2005.

In 2020, he co-founded the Bordeaux Shorts Biennale. In preparation for 2026: the documentary Les comptes de la lune, an alternative history of the invention of numbers and calculation.

Full biography Awards Website