Exhibition Micromegas, by Marcel Nakache and Isabelle Marliac in La Galerie des Photographes, from February 9 to March 4, 2023
Marcel Nakache is, above all, a restless soul.
Law student, theater director, assistant to directors and photographers, himself a filmmaker in the whole range of the moving image, then creative photographer, presented by several Parisian galleries and at numerous contemporary art fairs and auctions: Marcel Nakache cannot be said to be one of those who gets bored.
From his Savoyard mountains, back from his wanderings, Marcel continues to create relentlessly, with an explosive style, with colors that back him up; superimposing or rather merging hundreds of images into a vision of his own, capable of retranscribing in a single vertical «frame» the atmosphere and life of an entire city. This is the meaning of this exhibition, «Micromegas», in a nod to Voltaire’s giant, for this ability to bring together the little things that make a megalopolis dizzy. In Marcel’s view, each city has its own giant. With a soul of its own.
At La Galerie des Photographes, they have chosen to take you along with this fictional photographer into his romantic world, full of labyrinths and surprises, of human stories and mysteries.
Inaugurated in April 2019, La Galerie des Photographes is more than just a gallery, it is a place of life located in the heart of the 1st arrondissement between Bastille and Voltaire, where it stands out for its open and friendly atmosphere.
«In this gallery, we defend a noble and rich art, with solid roots and unlimited creativity. We believe that photography is not only for the initiated or for concepts. We advocate for affordable and beautiful images that reach the heart… and stay there! The famous punctum of Roland Barthes, this arrow put in perspective in its artistic richness, the studium. It is this rare balance which makes it live in the length»
About Marcel Nakacke
After studying law and working as a stage manager in the theater, Marcel Nakache began working in Paris as an assistant to numerous directors and photographers.
He progressively moves on to film directing, while continuing to make photographs. He directed numerous commercials in France and abroad, short films, documentaries and reports for television as well as numerous commissioned films for major accounts. Since then, he has alternated between music videos, documentaries, web creations, photography and multimedia.
Since 2007 he has been working on a photographic series inspired by cinema, «Fictions Assemblages».
An approach so rich that he still pursues it today, and whose latest creations we present at La Galerie des Photographes.
Behind the windows beaded with raindrops, or reflections that cut the city, Marcel Nakache opens his window on the world. The points of view telescope, merge, and end up arousing our imagination. What do we see? And what do we not see? In the living paintings of Marcel Nakache, silhouettes are invited, pieces of silhouette…
Isabelle Marliac
Guest artist
Born in the Paris region in 1960, she studied Art History at the ICART in Paris, and wrote a thesis on the relationship between photography and painting (available at the BNF – Cabinet des Estampes – site Richelieu – Paris). It was with the cinema that she began to «manipulate» images, 24 or 25 images per second… she has been editing films since 1987.
Since 2004, she works alone on one and only one image. Working on a still image and extracting its fictional and emotional potential was the initial challenge. First through images extracted from a film, then she takes a pencil, a charcoal, and draws without doubt what resembles her most, portraits of women. Revealed in a cinematographic framing for some of them, these portraits come to life with scanned or photographed color-materials. The mill is digital. The result, large format photographs. She calls this series «Faces».
Since 2004, the series «Faces» is completed according to her desire and her inspiration. Of this series of portraits of women she says:
«From photography, my work borrows the light and the color revealing the contours.
From painting, the pencil and the charcoal, from cinema, the frame.
Imaginary portraits, these women are the projection of a virtual reality.
the projection of a here, of an elsewhere, of a perhaps,
of a possible. «
Isabelle Marliac
