Baptiste Rabichon

Installation

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Like any explorer, Baptiste Rabichon doesn’t know exactly what he’s looking for. He follows his intuitions, imagines unknown territories, postulates their outlines. He knows that the journey is just as important as the destination, and even more so when it leads to imaginary lands. In recent years, his explorations have ranged across photography in all its forms. One of his procedures, for example, consists in combining digital compositions with gelatin-silver manipulations, all together on the same photosensitive support. With the pre-existing photos that he takes himself, finds in his cupboard, in magazines or books or on the Internet, the artist combines the results of his quotidian encounters. For example, in his works we may see flowers picked the day before or found in his pocket. Little things he finds, a little bit by chance, and that he then rather eccentrically decides to fit into his composition. Like a sculptor, he shapes photographic “objects” that are full of textures, colours, collages and tributes. His artisanal gestures produce results close to science fiction. For, like any explorer, Baptiste Rabichon plays games with time. His works takes us through the history of art, between Impressionist gardens and Warhol’s Flowers, alluding to Cubist guitars and to Surrealist figures and enriching them with bursts of contemporary triviality in the form, say; of Tic-Tacs or chewing gum. They also take inspiration from pop music: We’re beautiful like diamonds in the sky, which spreads over nearly 30 metres, was made by projecting diamonds directly onto photographic paper. Shine Bright. Like any explorer, Baptiste Rabichon’s quest is not static. In his latest project, the inner traveller chooses to explore the wide-open spaces in his own artistic vehicle: a recuperated caravan transformed into a travelling pinhole camera. It’s easy to picture our adventurer out on the roads of France, impressing gigantic images of the places he travels through. His prints reveal a friction between negative and positive, between photography and painting. Through these exhibited landscapes, like any explorer, Baptiste Rabichon offers a taste of adventure. Manon KLEIN

Baptiste Rabichon

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Born in Montpellier in 1987, Baptiste Rabichon lives and works in Paris and Tourcoing.
After studying viticulture and oenology, he attended the National Schools of Fine Arts (ENSA) in Dijon (2009), and Lyons (2011), before studying at ENSBA in Paris, where he attended the studios of Claude Closky and Patrick Tosani. He graduated with a DNSAP in June 2014.
Baptiste Rabichon maintains a critical yet passionate approach to the photographic image. He continues to explore age-old processes such as cyanotype printing, composing photograms, and using pinhole cameras, all while extending the possibilities of digital photography and using the tools of modern image making.
In 2015, for his first solo exhibition, «Tout se délitait en parties», at the Crous Gallery in Paris, he presented a series of prints that seamlessly blend traditional photographs with photograms. He is currently working on large format photography, using both traditional and digital technologies to expose overlaying images onto a single photographic print.
In September 2015 began his course at Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains.

Remerciements

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A great thanks to the teaching, technical and administrative staffs of Fresnoy. One thank you to Olivier Anselot, Julien Guillery, Aurélie Brouet, Gérard Collin-Thiébault, Manon Klein and of course any promotion Manoel de Oliveira.