MOMENTUM

Kosmic memories" reveals extraordinary architectures, veritable totems of civilization of the future erected as so many signs of a possible elsewhere. It is not by chance that this science fiction universe was born between the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1980s, especially in the satellite and non-aligned countries of the former Russia. First of all, the obsession with the cosmos is an old tropism of the Russian imagination (Tsiolkovsky, Sputnik, Gagarin...) and with the rapprochement of the West, artistic creation frees itself from political dogmas. If all these buildings have different functions, commemorative, political, institutional, their forms testify to the same breath: the invention of a future imbued with science fiction. We can see flying saucers, space stations and a multitude of geometrical shapes from another planet. Built mostly in concrete and at the tops of stellar landscapes, a telluric power from elsewhere emerges from these monumental architectures. Their location, while often a place of memory, also coincides with dawn or dusk, with a lateral light that reinforces their strangeness. Brutalist, futuristic, utopian, mystical, esoteric beauty... between Tintin's 'Temple of the Sun' and the monolith from '2001, Space Odyssey', these sentinels embody the dream of a future that is always to come.

A Time Capsule

My work on the city of Brasilia comes from a mixture of fascination and nostalgia for the stories and representations of the Future. Indeed, the city and capital of Brazil designed by Oscar Niemeyer, and which was built in 4 years in the middle of a desert, embodies the vision of the future of in the 1960s. The "pilot plan," Conceived in 1957 by the planner Lucio Costa, coincides with with The Beginning of the space age and the first artificial satellite of Earth: Sputnik. This was t he golden age of the space age, and the city of Brasilia, with its air of flying saucer-like architecture that seemed to have landed in the middle of nowhere, shows the nostalgia and the dream of a future frozen in time. The case is unique in its size and scope, an entire city, and by its state of conservation, the pilot plan of the city has remained unchanged because of its UNESCO World Heritage designation. Brasilia, a fossilized modernist temple in a utopian future, asserts itself as a time capsule.

I used the city as a backdrop for this series of work, one in which its own inhabitants were part of the staging . During my travels I kept coming back to the stories of Jorge Luis Borges and the strange empire whose map covers the city; (Fictions, 1946), by Dino Buzzatti and the idea of ​​time on the run (The Desert of the Tartars, 1940), or the movie, “The Truman Show”, by Peter Weir (1988) whose hero lives in an illusion. Finally, we must also mention the breath-taking and crazy beauty of the city of Brasilia where absolutely everything is composed with the same writing: linear, precise, minimal, fluid, radical, aerial, monumental, musical…

Part of the series “Brasilia” is part of the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (text available on the MET website) and the LVMH collection in Paris. ”

Vincent Fournier, 2019.

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Initiated by a wish to break away from controlled predefined photography I employed a distinct technique by transferring Polaroids onto Watercolor paper and a conscious dividing of the photo into multiple fields. The new take on photography let to the unique expression seen in Limit To Your Love series. I have most recently developed this series into a further exploration, using old-fashioned glass plate techniques

Movement is a series which combines a strong aesthetical point of view with meticulous attention to technical detail. As the title indicates, the series is concerned with giving shape to temporal and spatial aspects inherent in all visual experience.

Transfer series are polaroids transferred onto watercolour paper. Through this technique a particularly atmospheric and dreamy mood arises. Upon closer inspection, however, the eye begins to decode that in these works there are real places depicted, all with their special characteristics. 

Momentum is excited to exhbit at the inaugural Paris Photo NYC 2020. 

Paris Photo, the world’s largest international art fair dedicated to the photographic medium, is happy to announce the launch of Paris Photo New York April 2-5, 2020.

Presented with the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD), the new fair will create a transatlantic hub between the two historic centers for photography – Paris and New York thus forming a collective voice and international reference for the photographic medium.

The new fair will capitalize on the strength of the American photography market by expanding and diversifying the fair’s representation of international and cutting-edge galleries and invigorating the community of curators and art professionals throughout the Americas and beyond.

Coming from the North of England, where life can be grey and the summers short, Nick grew hungry for warmth, colour and adventure. “It made me want to explore the world and I think my photographs show more than anything else, a world full of light." Creating award-winning campaigns, Nick feels at ease both photographing stills and directing moving image. His work touches on everyone’s ability to sense and feel atmosphere. Whether it is a galloping horse in the desert, kids crossing the street, discarded shoes on a carpet or a majestic landscape, his pictures capture, not only a sense of the moment, but also the feeling.