About

Artist member of Adagp for the management of copyright.
Lives and works between Paris and Brittany.

Statement

Immersed in intimate, physical or metaphysical spaces, Manon Lanjouère's multidisciplinary work questions our imaginations and reveals a seductive combination of science and poetry. Traditionally opposed, these two disciplines placed on the same level create a disturbing strangeness that is plastically attractive.
Scientific research, in the fields of astronomy, meteorology or oceanography, is often the starting point and source of her projects.
By taking inspiration from scientific literature and popularisation texts and by borrowing codes linked to the scientific world such as protocol systematism, experiments, collection of samples or laboratory equipment, although it is most often only a question of transpositions, conversions or reinterpretations, her productions immerse us in the centre of natural events that could only take place in dreams. Natural phenomena which, although scientifically explained, nevertheless retain a significant power of fascination over us.

The photos, sculptures, ready-made assemblages, models, collages, archives and poetic writings that shape her installations are as much scientific research as artifice. An unusual story is to be found beneath fabricated images, clues, words that invite reflection and the creation of false witnesses reveals the ambiguity of our perceptions to better mislead us. She wishes to awaken the energy of seeing, transforming the gaze into a clear and easy action leading to a real awareness. The viewer is then asked to become a researcher by questioning the veracity of the pieces and documents he is given to observe. His participation is like a key to reading. It allows us to fully apprehend the atmospheres that emanate from her installations. Photography finds a plasticity that unfolds in the exhibition space and that activates our senses.

At the heart of her creation, fiction is at the service of the new narratives she weaves in each project. Her interest in the 17th century and the emergence of systems of tools for observing the world, such as the microscope, the telescope, and later photography, which offer accessibility to the invisible, allow her to tell and narrate the unknown. Fiction thus plays a central role, as it allows one to go beyond the limitations of observable reality to find a new point of view from which to describe the world. Manon Lanjouère thus sets up a form of mimesis of the invisible, where the mental image calls upon our collective imagination. Her imaginary stories and their marvellous dimensions are now mixed with images of present-day progress to give rise to a reality not yet seen, proposing a journey between past and anticipation. Fictions become a fundamental stimulus for the apprehension by men of their environment. Behind each story, the attempt to understand the interaction between landscape and human remains central. Manon Lanjouère is constantly questioning our relationship to the Earth, to the living, to the Universe and questions the border between artificial and natural in the era of the Anthropocene.

Resume

Exhibitions

2023/
Groupshow “Ressac”, from 1^st June to 17^th September, Galerie TELMAH, Rouen, FRANCE, Les Particules Duoshow with Richard Pak, from 28^th April to 16^th September, Stimultania, Strasbourg, FRANCE, Les Particules

2022 /
Soloshow at Salon Approche on galerie du jour Agnès b. Booth, from 10^th to 13^th November 2022, Paris, FRANCE, Les Particules
Soloshow at Festival de la Quinzaine photographique Nantaise, from 21^th October to 20^th November 2022, Nantes, FRANCE, Les Caprices de la foudre
Soloshow at Festival H₂O Artecisse, from 30^th September to 9^th October 2022, Chouzy-sur-cisse, FRANCE, Les Particules
Group show “Valles Marineris” at the Biennale Photo Mulhouse, from 4^th June to 26^th August 2022, Mulhouse, FRANCE, Le Laboratoire de l’Univers
Group show “Image 3.0” organised by the Jeu de Paume Paris, in partnership with the National Center of Arts (CNAP), from 20^th May to 4^th September 2022 at the Cellier in Reims, FRANCE, Mémoire d’un Futur

2021 /
Group show at Kyotographie x MEP Studio, with the support of Kering and its program “Woman in Motion”, from 18^th september to 18^th october, in HOSOO Gallery, Kyoto, JAPAN, Demande à la poussière
Group show “Mimésis” , Festival des Promenades Photographiques de Vendôme, from 3^rd July to 19^th September, Vendôme, FRANCE, Les Caprices de la foudre

2020/
Solo show at Fotografia Europea, from 17^th October 2020 to 28^th March 2021, Fondazione Palazzo da Mosto, in Reggio Emilia, ITALY, Le Laboratoire de l’Univers
Solo show Art Center of Moulinsart, from 15^th March to 5^th April, in Fillé-sur-Sarthe, FRANCE, Bleu Glacé
Solo show le Studio at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP), from 17^th January to 16^th February, in Paris, FRANCE, Demande à la poussière

2019/
Group show “Élégies” , 1+2 Residency, at the Chapelle des Cordeliers from 17^th October to 17^th November, in Toulouse, FRANCE, La Mécanique Céleste
Group show “Pulvérulence de la photographie”, curated by Bruno Dubreuil at the Immix Gallery from 27^th September to 31^st October, in Paris, FRANCE, Demande à la poussière
Group show Athens Photo Festival (APhF:19), from 13^th June to 27^th July, in Athens, GREECE, Bleu Glacé

2018/
Paris Photo Fair,Fisheye Gallery Booth, from 6^th to 9^th November, FRANCE, Demande à la poussière
Group show Festival la Gacilly in Baden, from 8^th June to 28^th September, in Baden, AUSTRIA, Bleu Glacé
Group show Festival les Boutographies, from 5^th to 27^th May, in Montpellier, FRANCE, Bleu Glacé
Group show Les Rencontres internationales de la jeune photographie, CACP Villa Pérochon, from 14^th April to 26^th May, L’Attrait de la lumière, from 7^th March to 13^th April, Bleu Glacé, in Niort, FRANCE
Group show "Objet de tendresse", at the Michel Journiac Gallery from 5^th to 17^th April partnering with Lafayette Anticipations and STartE, in Paris, FRANCE, Plus qu’un objet. Bien plus qu’une Mémoire

2017/
Group show Biennale les Rencontres photographiques du 10ème, City Hall of the 10^th district, from 16^th October to 18^th November, in Paris, FRANCE, Bleu Glacé
Group show “Expo-sed”, Les Rencontres d'Arles(voies-off), Atelier Gaston Luppée, from 3^rd to 9^th July, in Arles, FRANCE, Demande à la poussière
Group show Fisheye Gallery during Les Rencontres d'Arles (voies-off), from 3^rdJuly to 31^st August, in Arles, FRANCE, Bleu Glacé
Group show Festival la Gacilly, from 3^rd June to 30^th September, in la Gacilly, FRANCE, Bleu Glacé
Group show Festival Itinéraire des photographes voyageurs, from 1^st to 30^th April, in Bordeaux, FRANCE, Bleu Glacé

Awards

Residencies

2023 /
Finalist Talent contemporain Fondation François Schneider (on going)

2022 /Winner Prix Photographie & Science (résidence 1+2), Les Particules
Winner Prix Quinzaine Photographique Nantaise, Les Caprices de la Foudre

2021 /
Winner of the Residency Fondation Tara Ocean Mission Microbiomes, Les particules
Finalist of the Icart Artistik Rezo Award, Bleu Glacé

2020 / Winner Commission “Image 3.0” with the CNAP and the Jeu de Paume

2019 /Finalist Photolux Award, nominated by Musée de l’Élysée, Bleu Glacé
Finalist Prix HSBC pour la Photographie, Demande à la poussière

2018 /Finalist Prix Quinzaine Photographique Nantaise, Demande à la poussière
Finalist of the Guernsey Photography Festival Competition, Bleu Glacé

2017 /Winner Fidal Youth photography Award, Demande à la poussière Finalist Emerging Photographer Fund (burn magazine), Bleu Glacé
Finalist Bourse du Talent#71 Studio, Bleu Glacé
Finalist Prix Quinzaine Photographique Nantaise, Bleu Glacé

2021 /
Residency Fondation Tara Océans (from 10^th October to 10^th November, between Salvador de Bahia and Rio de Janeiro)

2019 /Residency 1+2, Toulouse, FRANCE ( from 1^st March to 30^th April)

2018 /CACP Villa Pérochon, Encounters of Young International Photography, Niort, FRANCE (from 29^th March to 15^th April)

2016 /Burren College of Art, IRELAND (from 1^st September to 31^st October)

Conferences & Talks

Conference at School of art of beauvaisis, cycle “Gravitation - Revolution” - February 2021
Talk MEP x The Eyes, Meeting Point #4, “The scientist as the driving force behind photographic research”, February 2020
Round-table discussion MEP/PhotoDoc, cross references, January 2020

Annual Seminar “Photography & Science” , résidence 1+2, October 2019

Acquisitions & Collections

Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP), Paris, France
CNAP, Centre National des arts plastiques, France
Musée de l’Élysée, Lausanne, Switzerland
Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône, France
Collection CACP Villa Pérochon
Collection Fidal, France
private collection, France, USA, Italia

Publications

Sciences et Avenir Online, 11^th december 2022, Les Particules
Fisheye Magazine Online, 11^th november 2022, Les Particules Quotidien de l’art, 16^th november 2022, p4, Les Particules
Fisheye Magazine Online, 15^th october 2022, Les Particules

Artistik Rezo.com, interview, 17^th February 2021
Fisheye Magazine Online, thursday 13^th february 2020, La Mécanique Céleste
“Les carnets de la création”, broadcast on France Culture by’Aude Lavigne, thursday 6^th february and replay, Demande à la poussière
Figaroscope n°23462, wednesday 22^th January 2020, p 25, Demande à la poussière
Que faire à Paris, Le révélateur de Bon Plan, 13-17 January 2020, Demande à la poussière
Télérama Sortir n°3651, 1-7 January 2020, p 10-11, Demande à la poussière

Pour la Science n°505, November 2019, p 86-87, La Mécanique Céleste
Fisheye Magazine n°36, May-June 2019, p45-49, Demande à la poussière

Fisheye Magazine n°33, November-December 2018, p38-39, Demande à la poussière
I-D Magazine Online, 30^th April 2018, Bleu Glacé, L’Attrait de la lumière
Télérama n°3562, p 66, Bleu Glacé
Mowwgli Online, 18^th April 2018, L’Attrait de la lumière
Mowwgli Online, 6^th March 2018, Bleu Glacé
Burn Magazine Online, January 2018, Bleu Glacé
Fisheye Magazine n°28, January-February 2018, p114-115, Demande à la poussière

Selection of BRIGHT Susan for the Guest Room of der Greif, November 2017, Demande à la poussière
Fisheye Magazine Online, November 2017, Bleu Glacé
Portfolio Selection in Gup Online, 17^th August 2017, Bleu Glacé
Fisheye Magazine n°24, May-June 2017, p112, Bleu Glacé

Selection of CANDROWICZ Krzyszto for the Guest Room of Der Greif, November 2016, Bleu Glacé

download the press kit ︎︎︎

Texts

Photography of possible worlds /Photographic retrodiction and uchrony - Michel Poivert, in his book Contre-culture dans la photographie contemporaine
(about the serie Demande à la poussière)

The historian can indeed remove pieces from the puzzle of the past to identify new relationships between causes and effects, and propose new agreements between narratives and explanations. This Gedankenprozess is the basis of the contractual approach, the history of "possibilities" and things that have not happened, and reminds us that the narratives of the past only became a historical science at the end of the 19th century - precisely when photography imposed itself, through its documentary value, as the ally of modern science. Going back in time and finding a narrative that makes it possible to adjust a logic between the facts and the documents: this retrodiction, which reminds us that the historian, like the artist, proposes to give a coherent form to the inaccessible, has become for the photographer a field of expression that raises him to the level of an imaginary operator.

The retrodictions and uchronies of the origins, and from them of the whole history of photography, are now accompanied by a taste for the creation of new legends. Their starting points, which are more like postulates of mathematical theory than intuitions, allow the construction of multidisciplinary poor whose coherence is based on the evidential value of photography. In keeping with the theories of possible worlds, everything is potentially real. The French artist Manon Lanjouère, in Demande à la poussière : l'empreinte du ciel (2017), thus mixes the poetry of catastrophes with our need for narratives. Imagining the consequences of a storm that leaves the roof of a house gaping under the starry sky, the artist collects stories, vernacular images, and fictitious scientific documents, then creates portraits of blinded characters and night views linked into an installation. The Milky Way would be composed of grains of silver dust born of photographic practices, like so many words scattered in the universe whose memory should recover the meaning.

Looking at a generation of artists with a solid background in photography, one becomes aware of the role that utopias have played in photography. Imagination produces new worlds where the representation of reality becomes unstable, where objectivity loses its ties to reality: a world that is at once psychic (that of inner images), extralucid and futuristic, a parallel world whose work structures a potential of reality made up of common anxieties and desires. All this, as we have said, seems to be specific to literature or cinema, where narratives allow us to navigate through time and invent characters and situations; or to mathematics and philosophy, which are capable of building entire worlds without being predetermined by reality and systems of authority. But isn't photography now also a sufficiently free and flexible mode of expression to build "possible worlds »?
It is therefore no longer a question of image as much as of imagination in photography. Imagination is a somewhat overused notion. In photography it even seems paradoxical. Yet the imaginary is one of the great concepts of modernity; throughout the 20th century, from Bachelard to Sartre, it has woven a network of knowledge, both physiological and poetic, that has never been intended to neutralise desires or dreams. This escape from the positivism established by progress has enabled the sensible to retain its values and Faure to make science an ally. Scientific imagination and artistic creativity go hand in hand when it comes to imagining worlds.
The invention of possible worlds is not synonymous with escape from our world. It can be a question of extensions, of parallel worlds that are not free of political questions: the potential for reorganising human beings, the subversion of genres and cultures, spiritualism and esotericism, etc. On a formal level, everything is put into play.
Photography takes on accents of freedom by experimenting with all forms of devices and technologies. In a history of photography today, the possible worlds resemble an immense utopian breath - a liberation of the imagination.

The stuff of Heroes - Fabien Ribéry
(about the serie the Celestial Mecanic)

Man is heavy, his hat is heavy, his brain is heavy and he regularly dreams of sending it packing, to Hell, or to Space, for example. The ground is heavy but it serves the dialectics of attraction and repulsion; it is a point of reference on which we can count. We belong but we dream of liberating ourselves, of disappearing, of escaping beyond the clouds. Up there where it is all silence and solitude it will be better, relaxing, maybe for a very long time even. We need only to step on the gas and leave at the right time.

A terrestrial body meets the celestial body – what will they have to say to each other? How to compare them? Who will translate their silent conversations? Can you see a smile from under a cosmonaut’s helmet? Manon Lanjouère keeps asking these questions in her research notebooks, in her photographs, in her collages, in her installations, in her odd objects fallen from an unknown planet. Let us call her Hybrid. The right balance must be found in order not to weigh down too much on the air or on the eyes or on the ego, but to create a heart that beats between all of us.

The ethics of the passer-by, of bungee jumping, of well unwound sellotape and of the orchestration of comets. We go into darkness, darker and darker, we have at last passed through the screen but is there even anything behind it? Must we come out of Plato’s cave? Are illusions not the possibility itself of our existence? A window passes through a window passes through a window. Origin itself is a fiction with which we can play.

I see Manon Lanjouère as an open territory, a questionning power and especially as the will to not close her questions off. Her approach is heuristic, finding its way through trial and error, inventing itself, as a tightrope walker on the line of the horizon, in a cobbled-together composite. In the night of Space there are no more milestones, it is a vertical dive into emptiness, the void, the infinite amniotic. We must be prepared to leave the light in order to come back to it differently, in oneself perhaps.

La Mécanique des femmes (“The Mechanics of Women”) by Louis Calaferte, in which the compass of a woman’s legs could represent God was published in 1992. In it one can read definitive sentences such as “Hell does not scare me. I am a daughter of fire.”.As for Manon Lanjouère’s rocket, it has penetrated Space, it is the technological ecstasy of supralunar flight, Méliès’ finger in the eye and the cardboard scenery. The void is a call, a delight, a challenge. Budding astronaut, oblique researcher, the artist brings together pieces and documents, rummages through NASA’s archives, manufactures evidence and memory, allows her intuitions to soar, fixes vertigo.

Manon Lanjouère readies herself, rereads Gaston Bachelard, interrupts her psychoanalysis and departs on a mission. Incidentally, in 1934 the author of Air and Dreams, thinking of Shelley wrote “The world is an immense cradle – a cosmic cradle – from which dreams consistently take flight.”
The artist cuts things up, glues, associates, creates coloured continuities, invents combinations. Jules Verne stands alongside Etienne-Jules Marey and the operetta rocket alongside the one made by gifted engineers. Inspired by encyclopaedic illustrations the plastic artist studies trajectories, draws graphs, allies fantastical spirit and serious analysis in the amused fascination of her subject, plate after plate, piece after piece. Science is a territory of dreams, a childhood furthered by other means when you are clairvoyant and when scraped knees don’t stop you from dancing.

With Manon Lanjouère there is a great pleasure of forms, of machines of vision and of the different natures of reality’s colliding orders. If this work resembles an investigation guided by a principle of free associations it is enchanted by the performative power of dreamy bubbles that constitute its own weightlessness little planet. We mustn’t insist but suggest trails, emit hypotheses, return to the drawing-board, rearrange, to not be afraid of the dark and simply invite everyone to get with us into a strange cockpit bound for Orion.

Pulverulence of photography : swarms, stellar dust, fog and interference - Bruno Dubreuil
(about the series Demande à la Poussière)

Since its origins, photography has been in search of the sky, the moon and the stars. Searching for points of light in the dark night, or the excessive visibility of the sun, the lightning strike and electrical phenomena. It was hungry for travel, on land and at sea, in the stars as well as in bodies and even in the most infirm corpuscular divisions. What she found along the way was nothing but herself, that writing of light capable of surviving time.

But even more than another exhibition about photography looking at itself (which has almost become rhetoric today), it would be an exhibition about the gaze. Or rather on looks. As many looks as there are steps. As many looks as there are spectators. But then, what looks?

The one that goes hand in hand with the world, in which it immerses itself without restraint : the look that likes to lose itself in infinite spaces, those that relate the infra-thin dust of our daily life to interstellar nebulae. This loss of scale, from the microscopic to the macroscopic, like an eternal optical game, a state of childhood innervated with imagination. The look by atomization, Sandrine Elberg.

There is also the look that concentrates on a simple point to the vertigo of hypnosis. Repeated flashes strike the photosensitive surface made up, layer after layer of bichromate gum, this historical technique of photography that the shooter strips with the brush. Colour almost by accident. The look by intense concentration, Mustapha Azeroual.

And finally, the look that digs, searches, scrutinizes. Seeking to pierce the opacity, to push back the night and cross the spaces of time. To find what? To conjure up what anxieties? To escape what fears? Because since the beginning, men have linked the elements and the threads of life to create stories, to give meaning to this infinite vertigo. To find the thread of the stories, to build a fiction. The narrator's look, Manon Lanjouère.

The look dissolves itself in the images, our body projects itself into them, it becomes points, lines, shapes, silhouettes. Finally, considers this : when the grain of the cosmos merges with the silver comets, seeing is nothing but desire, at the frontiers of proof and imagination. Looking at photographs or at the stars is never more than looking for our position in the world.

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Manon Lanjouère

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