Arts & Sciences PROJECTS is pleased to present Paris Photo (in New York), a selection of work by Paris-based emerging photographers exhibiting for the first time in New York.

Paris Photo (in New York) features the work of Vivien Ayroles, Stefano Marchionini, Laurent Champoussin, Tristan Van Spece, and Nelly Sabbagh.

Each of these photographers calls Paris home. Indeed, these photographers share not only a common home city, but a shared sensibility that invites the viewer to explore the inner and outer landscapes of their worlds. Working as collaborative partners in photography and in life, Vivien Ayroles and Stefano Marchionini capture scenes of domesticity, quotidian habits, and moody moments that document the couple’s relationship with their friends, family, and one another. They share their world through photo streams and albums posted on social networking sites such as Flickr and Facebook. Some of their images look like spontaneous snapshots, while others are deeply contemplated and composed; however, grouped together, in their online exhibition spaces, these images collectively embody a sensitive, narrative portrait of their lives. Laurent Champoussin’s work is often rendered with a deftly cinematic touch, speaking to his prior career as a film producer. For Paris Photo (in New York), Champoussin presents a series of images of expansive mountain ranges, evoking the quiet yet, powerful forces of nature manifested in fog, snow, ice, and seasonal changes. These landscapes, rendered in neutral tones, are juxtaposed with the single image of a man’s shirtless back, whose contours of skin and musculature are reciprocally referenced in the shapes and angles of the gently sloped terrains. Tristan Van Spece and Nelly Sabbagh’s oneiric images possess a filmic quality. Specters and shadows sampled from Gus Van Sant’s film Gerry are superimposed onto bodies, contrasting the material with the ephemeral, and the mortal with the immortal. Like the work of their co-exhibitors, these images also invite the spectator into an intimate and contemplative space.

Also on view: a selection of independently published photography books made by the participating artists, including:

ÉTÉ 10 by Vivien Ayroles & Stefano Marchionini The Pictural Architectonics by Laurent Champoussin A l’Est by Tristan Van Spece & Nelly Sabbagh

Bios

Vivien Ayroles (born 1986) is a Paris-based artist who works in photography. He graduated from the Institut d’Études Politiques in Aix-en-Provence with a Political Science degree, and currently works as a press agent. Stefano Marchionini, an Italian native (born 1985), is a Paris-based artist who works in photography, drawing and painting. He graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice in 2008 and currently is enrolled at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The two artists collaborated for the first time in 2008 with the Entr’ouvert project, a series of photographic-diptychs exhibited in a group show in Venice. In 2010 they published their first book ÉTÉ 10. Their work has been featured in numerous publications including the Encyclopedia of Moments, Roll Series, BUTT, and Out Magazine, among others.

Laurent Champoussin (born 1970 in the French Riviera) is a Paris-based photographer with a history of working in the film indusry as an executive producer for Alain Cavalier, Aki Kaurismäki, and Nuri Bilge Ceylan. A full-time photographer since 2007, Champoussin has exhibited his work in several solo and group exhibitions in Paris, Madrid, and Berlin. Champoussin maintains an active photography book publishing venture under the Zabriskiepoint imprint.

Collaborators Tristan Van Spece (b. 1980) and Nelly Sabbagh (b. 1983) are Paris-based interdisciplinary artists whose work often incorporates photography, video, music, performance, and printed matter. Van Spece and Sabbagh are active members of Le Gros Monsieur, the elusive art collective “that likes to give souvenirs”, as they self-describe. In 2010, they published A l’Est, a book of artists’ posters and loose photographs.