EDOUARD TAUFENBACH & RÉGIS CAMPO • LE BLEU DU CIEL

EXHIBITION: 2 TO 16 FEBRUARY 2021
BOOK SIGNATURE: SATURDAY 6 FEBRUARY 2021

The Swiss Life 4-Hand Prize is the only photography and music prize in France. Intended to reveal talents, it rewards every two years a project which mixes the original creation of a photographer and one of a composer. One year after being awarded the prize, Edouard Taufenbach (photographer) and Régis Campo (composer) present their joint original work "Le Bleu du ciel" in a never-before-seen exhibition at the Galerie Thierry Bigaignon.

Twice a year, swallows cross the Sahara and the Mediterranean to reach sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. Observing their migrating journey, photographer Edouard Taufenbach (together with his acolyte Bastien Pourtout) and musician Régis Campo sought to develop a sensitive representation of the passage of time, movement, and exchanges and circulations within a space. The movement of the swallows in the sky is the object of a fascination that feeds the imagination. The birds seem to follow a score made of ruptures, accelerations and silences, drawing abstract forms as signs to be interpreted.

This series is an experiment at the crossroads of artistic and scientific uses of photographic and musical mediums. Between formal rigor and subjective narration, the research deploys an approach where the swallow in flight, representing a vector of force, gives form and matter to an insatiable desire for freedom with the sky as perspective.

Without ever illustrating each other, image and music chase each other, successively surpassing each other. An acrobatic exercise where the repetition of rhythms and motifs based on the composition of the iterative music dialogues with the repetition of organized images. From one square to another, from one bar to another, from one swallow to another, Le Bleu du Ciel draws spaces of freedom, constructing a feeling of movement, speed, line breaks, so characteristic of the flight of swallows.

THE PHOTOGRAPHS BY EDOUARD TAUFENBACH & BASTIEN POURTOUT

Since 2014, Edouard Taufenbach has been pursuing a formal work based on photographs. His desire was not yet to produce his own, but rather to work on existing images in the manner of an editor. Through accumulation, framing, juxtaposition and repetition, Edouard seeks to deploy the formal and fictional potential of images. His obsession remains linked to the activation of memory, reminiscence and the sensation of movement. Bastien Pourtout joined Edouard Taufenbach's studio in 2018. Working for him, he assisted him in the realization of the latest works of "Speculaire » (2018-2019), in the creation of « La Méthode » (2020) and in the invention of « Le Blue du Ciel ». Since 2020, they have become a duo of artists.

Edouard Taufenbach, accompanied by Bastien Portout, has produced a series of more than 50 photographic compositions, where each image plays with the flight of swallows and the colors of the sky. For this very first exhibition, 17 unique pieces are unveiled.

THE MUSIC BY RÉGIS CAMPO

A colorful and playful style runs through the work of Régis Campo, a prolific and talented composer of concertos, symphonies, operas, film and stage music, pop songs... A dense and varied repertoire played by orchestras around the world. His works - already more than 300 - resonate throughout the world. First prize in composition at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, the former resident of the Villa Médicis has collected awards throughout his brilliant career: the Hervé Dugardin Prize in 1999, the Sacem Grand Prix for Young Composers in 2005, the Gaudeamus Foundation Prize for his work Commedia in 1996, three prizes at the Henri Dutilleux Competition the same year, and the Simone and Cino del Duca Foundation Prize in 2014. In 2017, Régis Campo was elected a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

Edouard Taufenbach discovered the work of the composer Régis Campo through his album Ombra Felice released in 2011. Since then, he follows his work attentively. In spring 2019, when the new edition of the Swiss Life 4-Hand Prize was announced, Edouard seized the opportunity to contact him and to propose to work together. Their common love for cinema and music made for a perfect match. Régis Campo started working on what was to become the “Bleu du Ciel” album. The five tracks that compose the album can be discovered below.

THE BOOK

Published by the Editions Filigranes, the book is a beautiful collectors item. Presented in an accordeon form factor the photographs of Edouard Taufenbach are gorgeously sequenced and can be viewed while listening to the music of Régis Campo as the tracks are both downlodable and printed on a CD.

You can purchase the book here.