Willow Tree, Potsdam, 2012. © Joakim Eskildsen, courtesy Polka Galerie.
Booth 104 - Pier 94 - New York City.
Opening on April 4th 2018.
For its second participation to AIPAD, Polka Galerie highlights the works of three young artists that question the artistic heritage of Hilla & Bernd Becher and the Helsinski School : Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre, Alexander Gronsky and Joakim Eskildsen.
Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre are two young French photographers united, since 2002, by their shared passion for contemporary ruins. “During our visits to ruins, we always try to focus on remarkable buildings, whose architecture embodies the psychology of an age and a system, and we observe the metamorphosis of the process of decay”.
Inspired by the Dusseldorf school, this young duo has proved its ability to investigate abandoned places. Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre deliver a superb document of the evolution of our economies and societies. Their images, scenes steeped in a tender yet unsettling apocalyptic atmosphere, reveal the flaws of our modern society.
After exploring Moscow suburbs (The Edge, 2009), Alexander Gronsky pursues his reflection on landscape photography with the series Schema.
Composed of diptychs, triptychs and polyptychs shot over a decade between 2005 and 2015, in different countries across the world including Russia, Japan and Azerbaijan, the series Schema depicts sequences of landscapes tinged with a snapshot and cinematographic aesthetic. Schema is a rebus, a strange algorithm, an unidentified DNA between report, document and fiction. Frightening buildings photographed as they grow old, years after years, almost identical pedestrian crossings, portraits of supermarkets reflected into the mirror… Without post-production retouching, Gronsky revisits his camera tools.
Finally, Polka Galerie will exhibit two series by the Danish photographer, Joakim Eskildsen (b.1971) : Roma Journeys and Homeworks.
The Roma Journeys (2000-2006), a remarkable testimony, and Eskildsen's first series initially exhibited at Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center and published by Steidl, depicts the Roma people’s life and experiences. His next series, Home Works, investigates the poetic passage of time within the home environment. Inspired by the pregnancy of his wife, Eskildsen goes back to his first sources of inspiration: photographing landscapes and his surroundings according to the light and the weather.
