Nicolas Floc'h
Artist (France)
Nicolas Floc’h is a multidisciplinary artist working with installation, photography, sculpture, and performance to question our changing times. He seeks to create socially engaged work that can create awareness around social, environmental, and economic issues. His work is inspired by what he learned from nature, travels, encounters, and scientific research. His work is often collaborative and open to community participation. Nicolas Floc’h has exhibited internationally and his solo/collective shows include FRAC Bretagne, FRAC PACA, SMAK (Ghent, Belgium), Centre Pompidou (Paris), MAC/VAL (Vitry-sur-Seine, France), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Contemporary Art Factory (Tokyo), and Winzavod (Moscow).
Learn more: www.nicolasfloch.net
Fleuves-Océan
Currently in residency at the Villa Albertine, a network of artistic residencies in the United States, Nicolas Floc'h continues his work between the two continents to bring two rivers into resonance: the Mississippi and the Rhône, and to bring out their most characteristic substance.
Fleuves-Océan explores these water flows, starting in the Mississippi: from its source to the mouth, from the drainage divides to the watershed. The photographic work around the Rhône reveals a part of its history, but so does the anthropological, climatic, physical, geomorphologic, geopolitical, historical, and cultural aspects. Using mainly climatic and geological approaches, this history will be told through a series of immersive pictures along the river.
The territories crossed by the bubbling water from the streams, turquoise in the Swiss lakes, muddy in the plains, are full of nuances in color and are indicative of human and natural activity.
Invisible
On the occasion of the IUCN World Conservation Congress and Manifesta 13 in Marseille in 2020, the Calanques national Park, in partnership with the Camargo Foundation, the Observatoire des Sciences de l'Univers - Institut Pythéas (Aix-Marseille University, CNRS, IRD) and the French Ministry of Culture, commissioned the artist Nicolas Floc'h to create a work on the park's underwater territory, entitled Invisible. This is the first artistic public commission supported by the Ministry of Culture that explores the underwater space.
Invisible, is a photographic and research project, initiated by Nicolas Floc'h on the underwater seascapes of the calanques as part of the residency programme "Calanques, territory of science, source of inspiration", launched in 2018 by the three partner organizations, which offered artists the opportunity to reflect on the links between Man and Nature. Through this photographic performance, Nicolas Floc'h proposes to shot the entire coastline in the Park area, i.e. 162 kilometres, which has never been achieved before. The images, taken in natural light and at a wide angle, allow a panoramic approach of the natural or man-made seascapes and their transformations. The photographs, most of them in black and white, show the sea as it offers itself to the eye, immersing us in its depths to the point of abstraction. Since 2010, Nicolas Floc'h's work, focused on the representation of habitats and the underwater environment, has given rise to a documentary photographic production linked to global changes and to the definition of the notion of underwater seascape, "thus generating new representations, new imaginations" in Floc'h's words.
Learn more: press release (in French).
Learn more about the book Invisible (Roma Publications, 2020).
"Paysages productifs" - Exhibition at the FRAC, the regional contemporary art fund in Marseille
The exhibition Paysages productifs ("Productive Seascapes") is a true photographic manifesto revealing the importance of exploring the underwater environment from an artistic point of view. The images, taken between 0 and -30 meters deep, in natural light and with a wide-angle lens, present a panorama of the natural and man-made landscapes and their transformatons. The photographs, mostly in black and white, show the sea as it offers itself to the eyes.
Exhibition from September 25, 2020 to April 25, 2021 at the FRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur.
Click here to read the press release (in French).
Click here to read the article "Nicolas Floc'h : Vingt mille yeux sous les mer" in Libération, November 10, 2020