Before the Eye Lid’s Laid

To mark the AICA France prize 2016, which was awarded to J. Emil Sennewald for his presentation of Agnès Geoffray’s work, the CPIF presents the artist’s first major monographic exhibition in a French art center.

You could sum up the history of images as a history of violent acts. Images penetrate, they are devoured by the eye, the gaze pierces and the body endures. Agnès Geoffray’s work explores these actions. Starting with found photos, she experiments with the latency of an image, the impression that a dramatic event is about to occur. In a photo, this latency is to be found at the moment when the camera’s shutter, or the eye looking at the photograph, closes. It is embodied in the blink of an eyelid, the brief instant just before the image is fixed. It is a pause, a moment of transition between object and image, between seeing and looking. It is that moment when you hold your breath.

Before the Eye Lid’s Laid presents a constellation of images and texts. In contrast with the usual relationship between the art critic and the artist, these texts talk to the images rather than talking about them. Texts and images come face-to-face causing their respective levels of meaning to oscillate. The exhibition design is an invitation to experience this oscillation between seeing, imagining and thinking.

A book of the same name has been published by La Lettre Volée to accompany the exhibition, in partnership with the Goethe Institute and the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne.