13 décember 2008 to 08 march 2009

The CCC presents ‘Une journée’ (One Day) a solo exhibition by Marie Bovo. In it, she brings together a large number of recent pieces created in 2007 and 2008, some of which are being shown for the first time here.

The work of Marie Bovo focuses on image, both video and photographic. In recent years she has become known for her photographs of nocturnal landscapes. Using long exposure times, these images give rise to an unreal light, revealing in a dreamlike way things that are usually hidden by the night. Flaring, slowed, time is an integral part of the majority of her work. Time, as it is is evoked or taken into account in the very process of realising the images, is different from the time involved in the usual habitual perception of photography. Marie Bovo proposes temporalities that are more psychological and metaphorical, and so conducive to suggesting universal cycles of living.

Marie Bovo’s work is deeply anchored in reality, dealing with implications which can be geopolitical or social, and it resounds with literary and poetic inspirations which feed its reflections and sensitivity. All of her creations bear witness to a duality in her way of looking at things. This can make a one-off situation into an expression of a universal dimension where the past meets the present, where different cultures, particularly those around the Mediterranean, are connected.

The series of ten large photographs of ‘Bab el Louk’ is shown here for the first time in its entirety. It depicts 24 hours on the rooftops and terraces of a district in Cairo. Bab El Louk is photographed from above throughout the day and night and framed in a virtually identical way. The area passes through subtle colour variations. It is metamorphosed by the light coming from the sky which is out of shot and from the city street lighting. The eye loses itself in the infinite detail of this organic urban patchwork which extends into the distance with no horizon.

The unit of time that provides the title of the exhibition is the day. As in French classical theatre, this is the first temporal cycle containing all the others, the one describing both daily life and absolute time, registering the passage of time.

As a response to the plunging shots from the rooftops of Cairo, we have the upward sweeps of the photographs in Marie Bovo’s latest series which were taken in the internal courtyards of buildings in the Belsunce district of Marseilles. The horizontals of ‘Bab el Louk’ make way for the radical verticality of the walls that rise up towards the sky. Marie Bovo seizes on the clearings of colour and pure light between the walls and within an enclosed architecture, to which the artist restores the almost prison-like feeling of being closed-in created by the walls.

Marie Bovo also presents video installations, and her latest creation is “Casida” shown for the first time at the CCC. In slow motion, the image is simple, almost trivial, one of doves taking flight or feeding on red grape seeds. These images bring to mind those with their origins in ancient myth, summoning up painting, at the origins of the images and representation.