Luce Moreau - curiosityLuce Moreau, courtesy of the artist

The exhibition Weightlessness gathers a series of experimental, photographic and cinematographic works by Luce Moreau, realized with the help of an astronomical tripod, whose equatorial mount proposes a weightless point of view on the terrestrial landscapes, day and night. Relationships are created between the spectator, the technological tools, and the celestial objects filmed, whether they are the stars, the Sun or our own planet, dragging us along in its movement.

Have a listen to Luce Moreau’s audio guide through the exhibition, made by Kulturpunkt.hr (in English)

Opening of the exhibition. Photo: Tanja Kanazir / Drugo more (Flickr gallery)

The eye of the camera protects itself from the overflow of sunlight in Pulsar, provoking the analogical retinal persistence of the Holes landscapes; Volta takes us on a nocturnal journey in weightlessness and we understand, through the jerks of the mechanical painting Paysage Provençal, that we sometimes have to invert the points of view in order to feel the cosmic and technological forces at work in our daily life.

The exhibition will open on Thursday, 11 May at 6 p.m., remaining on view at Filodrammatica Gallery (Korzo 28/1, Rijeka) until 1 June.

Gallery opening hours:
MondayFriday: 11 a.m. – 1 p.m. | 4 – 8 p.m.
Saturday 4 – 8 p.m.

PRESENTED WORKS:
 

Pulsar

video, 2012

Luce Moreau - Pulsar _ screenshot

The video camera used to shoot Pulsar is an obsolete video camera whose sensor remains highlighted, as the human eye would in bright light. It was told to its users to avoid any direct exposure to the Sun; however, the video looks at the Sun directly in the eyes, showing a fight between nature and technology. During the short moments of blinks, we can figure out all the Sun’s ghosts, while zooming in the dark zone of the exposed lens.

Shot using a motorized equatorial mount, the sun of Pulsar stays still in the video frame despite its natural rotation in the sky. Besides the refraction effects of the sun light through the lenticular grid of the video camera, the picture of the sun «marks» the sensor at different levels of zoom, the same way as a biological persistence of vision would. The tool, set in automatic mode, is protecting itself from the offensive light source by opening and closing its diaphragm.

Video «Pulsar» is usually shown alongside with the video installation «Holes».

Holes

three video-loops, 2012

Luce Moreau - Holes _ screenshot

Proposing an analogy between the human eye and the camera, Holes results from the prolonged observation of the sun in a fixed position by a video sensor (video Pulsar). The sun burns the sensor, and creates on its surface its image in negative, like a radical variation of the known phenomenon of retinal persistence. This persistence is in fact a defect linked to the design of the old three-tube sensors, whose production ceased for this reason in 1985, but which Luce Moreau uses to explore its plastic potential.

This defect was well known to the audiovisual technicians and videographers who used this camera. The effect of the “trace” left by the camera on its sensor has been metaphorically called “a comet”.

Thus the landscapes of Holes inherit a constant, immobile and permanent sun, a constant blue satellite. They bear the mark of experience and now bathe in a bluish retreat.

Volta

video, 2011

Luce Moreau - Volta

Volta exposes a static view of our moving world. The terrestrial landscape continues its race in real time, until completely out of the framing of the camera, while the stars remain motionless.

The project focuses on the use of a motorized equatorial mount tripod used by astronomical imaging scientists. This material with a simple mechanism whose motorized axis is set to that of rotation of the Earth makes it possible to compensate the movement of the planet, our own and imperceptible movement, and brings to the study of the stars a paradoxical «fixity».

While the familiar landscape gradually slips out of the frame of the image, the starry universe remains fixed, and with it our extra-ordinary point of view: the unpublished one of a «weightless» viewer, freed from the Earth’s gravity.

Project realized in technical collaboration with Olivier Labrevoir (amateur astronomer), and Patrick Pourcier (chief operator) at the Haute Provence Observatory (CNRS). Support Panavision Marseille.

Paysage Provençal

photo, digital print on matte paper, 60 x 90cm, 2012

Lue Moreau - Paysage provencal

The passing rocks of Paysage Provençal betray their own motion, the rotation of our planet. The motorized equatorial mount used for this photoshoot, usually used in astronomy, operates a counter-rotation of the Earth. It offers a weightless point of view, revealed by the accumulation of dozens of night pictures via the astronomical software Starmax.

In the pictural «traits» of the mechanical painting, evoking the impressionism french movement and its representations of the ephemeral character of light, one can observe the twitches of the camera shutter, suggesting the machine inner temporality.

Here, an hour of land movement, West orientation.

Video made during the Continuum residence on Frioul Islands, with Vols de Nuits.

 


 

LUCE MOREAU

WEIGHTLESSNESS

☛ Filodrammatica Gallery, Korzo 28/1, Rijeka

11 May – 1 June, 2023.

 
EXHIBITION OPENING:
Thursday, 11 May, at 6 p.m.

GALLERY WORKING HOURS:
MON-FRI from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. & from 4 to 8 p.m.
SAT 4 to 8 p.m.
(closed on Sundays and public holidays)

 

Luce Moreau - Bestežinsko stanje, plakat Oleg Šuran

 


 

LUCE MOREAU

lucemoreau.com

Born in 1982 in Paris, France, Luce Moreau is a photographer and artist based in Marseille. She is the co-founder of OTTO-Prod, a structure dedicated to art production, artist-in-residence and exhibition programme between France and Slovenia, since 2006. After several years exhibiting in festivals and foreign art programs (Backlight Festival – Finland, Italy, Germany, European Month of Photography – Luxembourg), she directed in 2011 the video Volta, at the Space Observatory of Haute Provence – CNRS ; this work offers a realtime and weightless sight of the surrounding landscape. In fall 2012, she has been invited by Vol de Nuits gallery on the Frioul Island for a 45 days long residence, which ended with a solo show untitled Continuum, exhibiting her research and works about retinian persistance on optics and gathering her observations in conditions of isolation. In 2013, Luce Moreau’s work expands to the thematic Soleils Numériques (Digital Suns) at the festival Accès-s. DICRéAM Grant support and M2F Créations-LabGamerz partnership allows the artist to present the landscape scale light installation Constance ; this project implements to the nightern hills a graphic clue connecting space to time. Les Palais (the Palaces), as the first chapter of the project Nature Ordonnée (Ordered Nature), is an ongoing and longterm research in collaboration local and foreign beekeepers; it crosses utopic architectures and wild instincts of eusocial organisms such as bees hives.
Luce Moreau - foto

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