Nicolas Claris · Romain Claris
Photographs by Nicolas Claris
Film by Romain Claris
Photo © Nicolas Claris — All rights reserved
Where BLACKS honor light and colors…
The NOIRS exhibition was presented:
From June 20 to September 9, 2018 at the art gallery of Relais & Châteaux Saint-James in Bouliac
From April 24 to 28, 2019 as part of the 10th International Multihull Show
From June 25 to July 15, 2021 by the gallery "La vitrine" in Bordeaux
Black is the origin. With the appearance of light, different BLACKS were revealed, multiple, sensitive, fragile but with such presence! BLACKS born from the deprivation of light, BLACKS reflections of non-reflections, a kind of anti-light that makes us discover colors, lights and textures. They emphasize, reveal, make us aware of riches so close. Magical, simple, everyday.
We took as a starting point material, spatial realities conducive to the imagination. One might be tempted to recognize skin, minerals, wine cellars, roads, mountains, water, sea, stars, coal, technical fabrics, bolts or dancers. But do we really need these eclectic identifications? These are only starting points, initializations, suspensions of time, like freeze frames masterfully illuminated by BLACKS…
We often find ourselves close to abstraction, approaching the border between dreams and realism in a curious, exciting and complicit approach. By combining imagination and reality, reveries and origins merge.
Because light is our brush, we wanted to continue playing, dreaming, searching even further… To pierce holes for the light.
NOIRS
Black is not sad! It is beautiful because through its self-denial, it allows us to perceive, see and discover light and colors, and therefore matter.
In our culture, the relationship between blacks and colors is not as binary as one might think. If absolute black absorbs all wavelengths, it would be characterized by an absence of color, but the reality is quite different, much more surprising!
Rarely pure, black is inseparable from colors. It reveals micro-details, tendencies, influences, so that each more or less luminous point allows us to apprehend one or several isolated or dominant colors, because it leans against matter, complicit with light. In this respect, black is not unique, it is fundamentally multiple.
But this multiplicity remains mysterious: we readily speak of "deep black" and curiously never of "light black": if it is deep, is black not also a revealer?
Such an incursion into the worlds of BLACKS is an amusing, sometimes complicated but fascinating quest... To make light and colors emerge from black, we must be attentive, curious, challenge preconceived ideas and question ourselves.
Before beginning our actual work, it is essential for us to research and experiment, go backwards, go forwards and not let ourselves be defeated.
At the birth of each image there is a real basis, regardless of its origin, what matters is the attraction that the final image arouses, its power of seduction, to take us elsewhere, into a world that everyone can imagine according to their own dreams and imaginations. We simply hope that this exhibition transports visitors elsewhere, gently, and makes them enjoy the incredible and surprising riches of BLACKS…
Signed prints, limited edition of 5 copies. Purchase a print or a copy of the film →