those eyes – these eyes – they fade (part II), at Musée des Beaux-Arts, Mulhouse, France
In July 2022, I first reviewed the group exhibition ‘those eyes – these eyes – they fade’, curated by Anne Immelé at Valletta Contemporary, Malta. In recent times, the exhibition has resurfaced and returns as part of the 6th edition of the Mulhouse Photography Biennale 2024. I revisit ‘those eyes’ on a trip to France, to reflect on this reincarnation, and to see what feelings may endure the test of time.
The MPB 2024 is on the theme of Impossible Worlds and contemplates, primarily, the fate of our planet in the Anthropocene. This is a daunting topic, questioning human activity, impact, climate, our challenges, and the preservation of natural worlds. The exhibitions present differing visions of a world that has become uninhabitable for certain living species, while exploring possible and dreamed spaces for the future.
According to curator Anne Immelé, those eyes, in particular, “explores the underlying links between humans and the living world, since the dawn of time. Offering a journey between urban and natural spaces, it is intended as a prolonged meditation, an active and poetic contemplation.” In this context, those eyes is less literal than other exhibitions in the Biennale, and that is entirely the point. In keeping with its core ethos, those eyes challenges us to work harder, to dig into subtle connections and unearth greater sensitivities. One of these is the relationship between humans, plants, minerals and other organisms, which “is crucial”, Immelé adds, “to the conception of worlds that are impossible today, but possible tomorrow.”
In keeping with its core ethos, those eyes challenges us to work harder, to dig into subtle connections … between humans, plants, minerals and other organisms.
In the previous iteration, those eyes was contained in a subterranean gallery; the exhibition even pivoted around a grand stalactite image by Bénédicte Blondeau. In Mulhouse, it is given the top floor – the tree house, per se – of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, with windows surrounding each room. There’s air and space to breathe. As in 2022, the exhibition features artists Nigel Baldacchino, Bénédicte Blondeau, Bernard Plossu and Awoiska van der Molen, but there’s a new arrival, Raymond Meeks, who needs little introduction. Each artist displays entirely different works from the original exhibition, creating a paradoxical encounter of familiarity and renewal.
The wooden floors creak under my weight. We begin with Awoiska van der Molen, surrounded by a number of the artist’s now iconic works: mountains, forests, urban scenes, and liminal spaces. Known for darkness and solitude, these photographs teeter on the edge of what can be seen. Van der Molen insists on slowness and stillness, she reawakens our primal senses, our aptitude for survival and the embrace of the nocturnal, and perhaps, the unknown. It must be said that although urban spaces punctuate the nature works, a sense of longing pervades throughout; she pulls us as if by a dark thread into a labyrinth of the self, to a place that is primeval.
Van der Molen insists on slowness and stillness, she reawakens our primal senses, our aptitude for survival and the embrace of the nocturnal, and perhaps, the unknown.
On the subject of Van der Molen’s relationship to dreamt, imagined, or parallel worlds, I direct the reader to Belgian writer, Erik Eelbode’s description: “[in her works] there is no doubt that we are getting a direct look at the world. Yet, at the same time, the doubt, longing, and quest of the photographer to be gone from this world are entering into our view.” To quote (out of context), the poet and novelist Lavinia Greenlaw: “She is standing on the edge of the world. There is no greater darkness than she is about to fall into. You can see her toes grip and her ankle flex. Her left heel is already over the edge.” Van der Molen seems to be in a process of departing, retreating from this world. Her reasons as to why are never entirely clear. In her works, we fade to black.
In the next room, we meet Raymond Meeks. As a newcomer to those eyes, I have given his work extended thought. He presents works in an incomplete grid formation from Erasure; After Nature, photographs made at a single location in Southern California’s Colorado Desert. The works depict discarded objects and remnants, littered on the arid landscape around a holding pond set within an abandoned housing estate, symbolic of the perceived ruins of capitalism, loss and the residue of human presence. I have a particular interest in Meeks’ acute sensitivity for composition for which he is widely known; in conversation, he speaks about recognising forms from his research – abstraction, sculpture (see American abstract sculptor David Smith), or even the seeming formlessness of music – which reappear to his eye when photographing; we could call it ‘virtual composition’.
Meeks is not only sculpting with his camera, but is attuned to the scattering of objects as a form of drawing.
Meeks’ works are entirely sculptural. In fact they are reminiscent of Robert Smithson’s A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey (1967), where the famed artist journeys around a post-industrial landscape, claiming ‘sculptures’ via photography of readymade ‘monuments’: pipes, fountains, old bridges, pontoons, even a sandbox. When probed on the subject of sculpture and influence, Meeks elaborated: “I began noticing how the light in Southern California was washing the surface of the concrete holding pond, offering relief to the scattering remains of the desert. I was reminded of drawing as, essentially, mark-making. And, yes, sculpture of the most elemental, rudimentary kind.” Meeks is not only sculpting with his camera, but is attuned to the scattering of objects as a form of drawing.
The works in Erasure; After Nature are actually diptychs: Meeks pairs his photographs with old documents of text and found images which are overpainted with white; an act akin to the gestural, expressionistic painter and sculptor, Cy Twombly, who made pieces of found forms coated in plaster or white paint, alluding to mythical artefacts of the past. This opens up a layering of time, memory, accumulation and loss. For Meeks, “erasure becomes an exercise or an attempt to get at only what’s essential.” As I gaze at the white, a latent ghost of an image begins to emerge, it conjures simultaneously, serenity and tension. He describes “working the surface to get at something more elemental buried beneath”, which positions erasure, counterintuitively, as a form of image making too.
Nigel Baldacchino presents Pinetu, the most ambitious installation in the exhibition. An architectural staging extends out into the room, golden light cascades through the windows, projecting light and shadows onto large scrolls of paper. Pinetu, from the Latin, Pinetum, meaning a collection of pine trees, draws on the history of the artist’s local park on the periphery of Floriana, Malta. In the 18th century the land was barren, sloping down from an outer fortification line, to maximise visibility of insurgents from the top; in 1935, British rulers planted a dense rectilinear grid of trees, rumoured to disrupt insurrectionist party gatherings; in 1980s-90s, the park became the epicentre of Heroin culture, and an infamous site of male cruising. It is said they belonged to a marginalised tribe of middle-aged men with heteronormative families leading a double life in strict catholic society. The trees concealed and stopped prying eyes. In the near future, there are plans for the park to become ‘rehabilitated’, for its history to be stripped, eradicated, to be rendered unseen.
Pinetu is indicative of the ways humans have shaped and inhabited the landscape, channeling recurring motifs of visibility, concealment, absence and presence. The photographs on the scrolls, carefully sequenced and scaled, interact with a glowing translucency as we navigate around the room. The installation continuously reframes itself (there is no singular optimum view), it’s an unfolding experience, a whirlpool of images of the park, fading in, fading out. We are walking among the trees. In making the work with a 500mm lens, Baldacchino plays with distance, observation, framing and compression, to such an extent he became concerned with “the nature of the seeing rather than the nature of the seen.” In our public conversation, we discussed how the installation relates to the photobook dummy of Pinetu – in fact, it can be considered an ‘expanded book’. Baldacchino spoke of “making the nature of paper the protagonist”, and how this materiality recalls “the absence of the park, over the years, from the printed page in newspapers or any reportage, and therefore, public discourse.” Baldacchino’s installation overlooks Steinbach Park; we too become voyeurs, engaged in photography’s most insatiable act.
In Nigel Baldacchino’s Pinetu, an architectural staging extends out into the room, golden light cascades through the windows, projecting light and shadows onto large scrolls of paper.
Bernard Plossu’s work was selected by Immelé from the photographer’s large oeuvre, to resonate with Nigel Baldacchino and Awoiska van der Molen, creating a thoughtful dialogue between the three. The show includes a number of vintage black and white silver gelatin prints of cityscapes, evocatively titled, Nature as a Prisoner, made in Paris and Los Angeles in the 1970s. Here, Immelé describes how Plossu’s focus lies on “a poetic exploration of the resilience of small plants and trees thriving amidst the concrete landscapes of large cities.” There is one particular image of a pavement (or sidewalk if you prefer), where a tuft of grass sprouts on the edge, surrounded by concrete; it’s a considered study on the urban landscape and nature, where nature’s perseverance jumps to take a foothold in our smooth and generally impermeable surfaces. In contrast, colour images of scenes from the Mediterranean – printed on Fresson paper which gives the works a painterly finish – display the exuberant growth of seaside vegetation.
In the final room, Bénédicte Blondeau’s Ondes (Waves), attempts to grasp the celestial flow of energy that shapes our lives and the cosmos. Scattered as a constellation across the gallery walls, her meditative images of landscapes, ancient glaciers, caves, rocks and volcanic territories, vary in scale and levels of perceptibility. Blondeau intersperses these images with microscopic views of sea water droplets and visual recordings made from ultrasound waves of her own pregnancy – she shifts our attention, from geological time and minerals to birth and the source of life itself. She depicts processes that have formed the earth alongside those that seek to erode and reshape the land. Ondes is based on the principle that everything is in perpetual transformation, whether we are capable of perceiving it or not. To quote Virginia Woolf in The Waves, “I am made and remade continually.”
What Blondeau demonstrates in Ondes, is that photography doesn’t have to be a steady progression of narrative, following character, action and resolution. Photography restricted in such a manner is like caging a song bird. We can begin again with image making and seeing, no matter if we falter, travelling through. We may challenge our perception of what might be realised in an image and, in turn, our relationship with the world. This after all, is a key tenet of those eyes – these eyes – they fade.
As I drift out of those eyes, I walk along the hallway of Musée des Beaux-Arts into a grand gallery of Old Masters. I scan the room and a golden little image glints back, catching my eye. Kneeling Woman (1892) by French painter Jean-Jacques Henner, depicts Saint Magdalene, who, we assume is weeping, as is often portrayed, although this detail is hidden from sight. It’s a remarkable picture: a woman kneels, her head between her arms, slumped over something unidentifiable. Around her, the world is ablaze, she’s surrounded by a vortex or an inferno, a storm of amber. It’s full of energy. Henner seems to be still working on the image. The world is being formed in front of our eyes, or it is being stripped away? Magdalene is at risk of dissolving into the void, if it was not for the heavy black sketch marks outlining her body, a hastily drawn membrane, supporting her shape and form. Are we witness to the projection of her internal weather? To reference Immelé: “Like images that appear with every blink of an eye, the exhibition offers visions of a world in motion.”
The exhibition ‘those eyes – these eyes – they fade’ (Part II) at Musée des Beaux-Arts, Mulhouse, France, continues until 5th January 2025.
All exhibition installation images © Nigel Baldacchino, 2024.
Banner image – Raymond Meeks, from Erasure; After Nature
Nigel Baldacchino
Bénédicte Blondeau
Raymond Meeks
Awoiska van der Molen
Bernard Plossu
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