6 November - 20 December 2008

Guillaume Lemarchal goes on short expeditions, mostly to Eastern European countries and preferably when the land is frozen under the winter snow, taking pictures of now-abandoned places that used to be engaged in secret activities, timeless locations marked by the chilling shadow of the ex-USSR, like questions suspended in mid-air. These territories in suspended animation, in which buildings remain embedded like sculptural forms devoid of function, are imbued with a leaden silence, a ponderous strangeness that the photographer records and attempts to decode. There is poetry here, but as the artist himself writes, horror is never far away, and another beat inhabits these images: that of human breathing, sometimes with a hint of tenderness for what these places of denial used to be, or what they are to become.



Galerie Michèle Chomette
24 rue Beaubourg, 3e. Métro : Rambuteau
Téléphone 01 42 78 05 62
Open daily except Mondays, Tuesdays and Sundays, 2 pm - 8 pm.
Admission free