RALPH GIBSON • VU, IMPRÉVU

OFF-SITE EXHIBITION – VENET FOUNDATION
FROM MAY 22 TO SEPTEMBER 30, 2025

The Bigaignon Gallery is pleased to announce an exceptional exhibition at the VENET FOUNDATION, located in Le Muy (83). Renowned for its contemporary artworks—particularly sculptures and abstract pieces—and founded by French artist Bernar Venet, who is represented by the Bigaignon Gallery, this exhibition will spotlight Ralph Gibson and revisit 15 of his most iconic photographs… through music! An extraordinary exhibition reinterpreting fifteen of Ralph Gibson’s photographs from May 22 to September 30, 2025.

This exhibition offers a unique opportunity to revisit fifteen of Ralph Gibson’s most iconic photographs from a new perspective. Carefully selected by the American artist and his gallerist, all the images were taken between 1968 and 1990. Each high-end silver gelatin print is paired with a musical piece—composed, performed, and recorded by the artist himself specifically for this exhibition.

The project aims to reveal another side of the American master’s genius to collectors. A world-renowned photographer, especially known for having created a new visual vocabulary in the 1970s with his Trilogy—The Somnambulist (1970), Déjà-Vu (1973), Days at Sea (1974)—Ralph Gibson is also a talented guitarist.

He discovered the guitar at age 13, and the camera four years later. Since then, he has described himself as a perpetual learner, still believing he has much to discover through both instruments. For Ralph Gibson, melody is to music what reality is to photography. Music and photography are equivalent imaging systems in that they share a similar sense of abstraction. Reality is the purest form of abstraction, and music is the most abstract of all languages.

According to Ralph Gibson, “Music echoes photography in that the act and the idea are one and the same. Simultaneous. Music is a universal language. Every work of art strives to be like it. Close your eyes and a photograph becomes nothing more than an abstract memory. Music, on the other hand, cannot be ignored. Ears have no eyelids!”

Finally, the exhibition is accompanied by a video work—another format that allows a fusion of image and music, and one to which Ralph attaches great importance. “I’ve been working on Music for Lens and Guitar, my suite of video and music, for 15 years. Presenting it here, at the foundation of my lifelong friend Bernar Venet, is a true honor for me.”

A cultural institution founded in 2017 by contemporary artist Bernar Venet and located in the South of France, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, the VENET FOUNDATION stands out for its exceptional setting and its mission to promote contemporary art, host other artists, and support artistic creation.