THOMAS PAQUET • VALENTINO FOUNDATION

On the occasion of the opening of PM23, the new cultural space initiated by the Valentino House in Rome to support contemporary talent, a special commission was entrusted to Thomas Paquet. The artist conceived an unprecedented photographic installation designed to engage with the unique architecture of the Fondazione Valentino Garavani e Giancarlo Giammetti. This monumental work embodies a radical gesture at the intersection of technique, material, and vision.

“This photographic installation constitutes a total work of art. It transcends technical contingencies, expressing beyond the image the sentiment of pure vision; it is, finally, the optical chant that conjures the end of History.

This immense color print, unprecedented in the contemporary history of artistic photochemical processes, transforms the chromaticity of photosensitive paper into an image-forming substance. It is a perceived presence, a material stretched into the horizon. The work was created with what are probably the last two rolls of Kodak paper of this format still existing in the world. It will never again be realizable under the same conditions; it is unique and definitive. It is the final surge of a 20th-century technology. The work has become a precious relic: it is inaugural (unprecedented) and testamentary. Its infinite value arises from this cycle that wraps the history of art onto itself; indifferent to progress, it abolishes time because it bears witness to the possibility of returns. One might call this work "neo-analogical."

Thomas Paquet has been working for years with the forms and substances of the horizon. His photographs are not depictions of reality but experiments with the photosensitive qualities of photographic chemistries. Everything is in "the photographic," conceived as a world in itself, of lights, colors, substances, and imaginaries. The paper was exposed by a ribbon of LEDs programmed according to a precise rhythm to achieve nuances that no other technology can provide. Like a learned alchemist, Thomas Paquet built his system, surrounding himself with the best technicians, both in computing and in analog laboratory work. He found at the Fresnoy studio one of the last color developers of this format. Printer Diamantino Quintas enabled the realization of an acrobatic operation, in the dark, which consisted of "passing" immense rolls of paper through the machine in sync with the light projections of the system programmed by Benjamin Sonntag, grafted in front of the developer. Nothing here is high-tech; the entire process was conceived in the mode of a fab-lab to respond to an exceptional commission: analog color prints over 10 meters long that had to be rigidified while maintaining the necessary flexibility to fit the curve of the oval room of the Fondazione Valentino Garavani e Giancarlo Giammetti. And this was achieved thanks to a surface mounting (Diasec) carried out by the best workshop in Paris (Atelier Image Collée), following the intuition of gallery owner Thierry Bigaignon. In some respects, the production of the work is a true case study.

In painting as in dyeing, red was the first color that man mastered. It is the beginning of color; it is also the color of revolutions, in the literal sense: the color of what returns to its origin. Twilight is the stretched moment that completes the sun's course and already warms the dawn's glow. The history of photography is exactly at this point: the most contemporary creations enchant the obsolescence of techniques. This magnum opus by Thomas Paquet can only be compared to what would be a monumental slice of the philosopher's stone. It has the mystery of an epic tale and inspires contemplative peace.

The reference to the Orangerie Museum's room, which houses Monet's last Water Lilies, comes to mind: in the fetal curve of an art temple, the sensitive gaze follows the curves of a cycle that ignores the idea of end and beginning. Thomas Paquet's Red Horizon is an infinite twilight. It manifests the immortality of red; its haptic flavor offers our eye a velvet surface. It is a flying carpet suddenly transformed into a mural painting. How can one not think of the red of the frescoes of the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii, before the setting that the work provides for Valentino's mythical dresses, nicknamed the Emperor of Red?”

Michel Poivert