De haut en bas Travail de diplôme Bachelor, 2009

23 June - 29 August 2010 This exhibition presents the work of Cyril Porchet, who graduated in 2009 from the visual communication department (photography section) at the ECAL art school, Lausanne. 'I've taken a systematic series of frontal shots of the choirs of ten baroque churches in Germany, Spain and Austria. I chose these churches for their exuberant style, but also for the arrangement of their ornamentation, composed of decorative, figurative and symbolic elements. I photographed these places of worship in order to produce an impression of visual saturation where a dizzying surfeit of marvels ultimately troubles the senses. At first glance, the viewer is confused, but then he or she instinctively perceives the concrete elements that make up the whole. The optical flatness produced by the camera shot evokes the technique of trompe-l'œil that is often used in this type of architecture. This approach, in an elliptical, critical way, draws a parallel between the baroque exuberance of these churches and the obsession with spectacle characteristic of contemporary society. As Guy Debord pointed out in his seminal work "The Society of the Spectacle", the world is in a permanent state of representation, desires are channelled into images, and reality is thus falsified. Art historians have posited the idea that the baroque style developed at a time when the Catholic church was reacting to scientific revolutions. The baroque is thus the instrument of the Catholic church as it attempted to (re)conquer souls. By choosing baroque churches as metaphors for the spectacular, my images are like a historical reminder of the way images function as powerful tools for communication, manipulation - or propaganda." Cyril Porchet