Michel Mazzoni
Michel Mazzoni is a visual artist who uses the photographic medium to explore its material essence. Ever seeking the limits of the image, his work is placed at the boundary of photography and painting, figurative art and abstraction. It’s a fragmentary aesthetic that blurs the figurative referent and reveals the concrete expression of a document that becomes object.
Conscious of the precariousness of both printing methods and short-term broadcasting, Michel Mazzoni examines the status that images have today, their fragility. Believing that photography is not a medium that should account for what is real or even to propose a faithful representation of reality, Mazzoni distances himself from material readings and creates ‘objects’ that unsettle our pre-conceived ideas. His work is based on the image as motif, one which tends to disappear. With Mazzoni, ‘accidents’ are the result of technique and great semantic reflection. He works by subtracting, removing details, exploring overexposure, underexposure, modifications of the surface area, inversion and saturation. From this perspective, the images become more intriguing, leaving the viewer to question their meaning, content and connections.
Among the many means of dissemination, Mazzoni is particularly fond of book publishing, where the relationship between form and substance is particularly well thought through. The works’ spatial installation builds on this principle, with images that work in harmony with, or in opposition to, each other, creating a certain rhythm that takes into consideration the exhibition space. Confrontation, reconciliation, scale, spacing, printing techniques and the style of presentation all form an integral part of the overall perception of the oeuvre.
The selection and order of the photographs has been done according to the artist’s specific criteria. These are not shared with viewers so that they can create their own paths, connections and separations and see a narrative. The artist’s desire is to give a more poetic dimension to the reading of images than a merely factual or narrative one.
Text: Frederic Collier
