Smith & Diplomats

SMITH

SMITH is a graduate of the École nationale supérieure de la photographie (Arles) and of Le Fresnoy (Studio national des arts contemporains). Photographer, visual artist, director and researcher, he has been exploring the thought and practice of metamorphosis: gender, era and state transitions, plasticity, atomic hybridization, biotechnological mutations and dream work have marked out his proposals for the past ten years. SMITH now observes the cosmic porosities of human identity, through a polycephalic and polymorphic research and creation methodology. Imagined with astrophysicist Jean-Philippe Uzan in 2017, Désidération takes the form of a common dream where the proposals of writer Lucien Raphmaj, designer Matthieu Prat (DIPLOMATES), composer Gaspar Claus, performers François Chaignaud and Nadège Piton hybridize, in the manner of a blob extending in all directions of the imagination. His work has been presented in the form of solo exhibitions at the Rencontres internationales de la photographie d'Arles, at the gallery Les filles du calvaire, at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, at the Museum of Photography in Helsinki, but also in many countries in Europe (Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, Luxembourg, Germany, Spain, Italy...), Asia (China, Cambodia, South Korea), Latin America (Mexico, Chile, Uruguay) as well as in the US. SMITH founded in 2018 the Cosmiel cell with writer Lucien Raphmaj and astrophysicist Jean-Philippe Uzan. Together they collaborate with the studio DIPLOMATES on their joint project Désidération. He is represented by the gallery Les filles du calvaire.

Smith in Normandy - Disregard (Noctural-Deauville)

SMITH, invited to Deauville, continues his project "Désidération", in collaboration with DIPLOMATES. Taken on a moonless night during the second confinement, these images describe a disastrous Deauville, where the celestial objects closest to us disappear in a last blink, leaving our terrestrial environment melancholic, orphaned of the energy of the stars. This series is presented as a new chapter in the nocturnal photographic diary of Anamanda Sîn, a metamorphic figure embodying the terrestrial in search of the celestial in places that are sometimes urban, sometimes deserted, in solitary communities or with individuals populated by worlds. Anamanda's sensitive vision is embodied in thermal images that do not show things, but relationships: between light and heat, the living and the non-living, human and non-human vision, presence and absence. The exhibition of the series will be put into space by Diplomates, SMITH's accomplices since the first forms of the project exhibited since 2019 at MacVal, LACE - Los Angeles Contemporary Projects, the gallery les Filles du Calvaire and the Rencontres d'Arles. Recent publications: "Désidération (prologue)" éditions Textuel (2021) & "Desiderea Nuncia" Palais books (2021).

Installation et projection

Les Franciscaines, 145b Avenue de la République - Du mardi au dimanche de 10h30 à 18h30

Petit Bain (Boulevard de la Mer, in front of the Olympic pool)

Olympic Pool