artist statement -

 

The Light Travelers were born in Shanghai. They are sons and daughters of my fascination for China. They belong to the city lights and the immensity of Chinese mega-cities. They also convey the feeling of loneliness and strangeness one might have when living in such cities, wherever they are, metaphoric of our lives in general in our information saturated, Orwellian world. Light Travelers are about intimate fragility, as we are confronted to a dehumanized, endlessly communicating, overpowering society that often leads to an utter solitude.

 

process - night shooting

 

The Light Travelers are shot at night or in places without daylight. I rely upon my "portable studio" to render the atmosphere crepuscular, in conjunction with  LED, synthetically coloured ambiances. I spend hours in my short lived sudios, set up in the middle of public or private places that contain the special ingredients I need. I spend days looking for such places in China mainly (Shanghai, Hangzhou, Hong Kong) or in european cities (so far, Venice and Paris).  I'm always on the lookout for such places, and whenever I've got a specific idea, I set up my own setting in my studio in Aix en Provence.

 

perception - the illusion of reality

 

I voluntarily create a distorsion in the perception of reality thanks to a scale illusion. This sense of illusion is an hommage to our childhood perceptions and confuses the viewers in order to confront them to what their place might be in the universe. It's also a statement about the influence of film special effects on my practice.

 

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