Clic Gallery and Christiane Celle are pleased to announce_Line Up: Rigging Knots and Glimpses of a Master Class_. The exhibition is a unique, creative encounter between two artists that offers a rare peek into the world of renowned high wire artist Philippe Petit. Candid photographs of Petit taken by Victoria Dearing will accompany Petit’s own intricate pencil drawings of his rigging knots.

Philippe Petit—universal poet laureate of the high wire—accomplished what may be the most astounding “artistic crime” of all time. On August 7, 1974 he walked a high wire illegally stretched between the rooftops of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, an adventure chronicled in his book, To Reach the Clouds, which became the basis of the Oscar-winning documentary Man on a Wire. In addition to his walk between the Twin Towers, Philippe Petit has performed on the high wire more than 100 times around the world. Besides reaching for the clouds, he writes, draws, gives lectures on creativity, practices the art of 18th century timber-framing and lock-picking, plays chess, is an amateur oenologist, an apprentice bullfighter and has been arrested over 500 times for street-juggling. He is the recipient of the first Action Maverick Award, a New-York Historical Society Award and the prestigious James Parks Morton Interfaith Award. He serves as the Artist-in-Residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and the French Ministry of Culture has bestowed on him the title of Chevalier des Arts & des Lettres.

During Philippe Petit’s first series of Action Maverick Master Classes held at Elizabeth Streb’s SLAM in Williamsburg in August of 2010, he allowed himself to be photographed by New York based photographer Victoria Dearing. Her guileless photographs of Petit, taken from a respectful distance, capture his generosity of spirit and reveal Dearing’s awe at Petit’s ability to impart 45 years of his self-taught genius to his students. Victoria Dearing was born in California and was raised in New York City. She received her degree in Art History from Franklin College in Lugano, Switzerland. Dearing has traveled extensively throughout Europe, North, Central, and South America, and Africa, using photography to communicate life as she sees it in the moment, with no restrictions on her creative output. She has exhibited in New York and Milan and been the curator of several photographic exhibitions for her father, Gerald Dearing.