France
Jean-Christophe Garcia
Biography
Jean-Christophe Garcia was born and lives in Aquitaine, France.
JCG’s photos, whether they are static images or images of movement, invite us to explore our relationship with the world around us, a world we increasingly apprehend and remember both individually and collectively through optical images.
‘JCG explores reality and its representations. Some of his photos adopt a documentary style – take for instance the series entitled documents potentiels, in which prison cells or domestic interiors seem to follow a predefined and rather rigid photographic protocol as a means of rendering their neutrality palpable.’ Anna Maisonneuve, Palper le Neutre in Sud Ouest, 31.05.2011
Each image is indeed a document and each photograph strives towards objective form as a means of offering what it depicts to the onlooker’s subjective interpretation. Each viewer is invited to construct their own understanding of each photograph whose form allows for its documentary status. Constructing and inventing, rather than representing, are the keywords of his art, as a means of defining and creating the conditions in which a concrete exploration of the world is possible, rather than simply portraying reality through mere specular and/or spectacular images.
Works in public collections: Centre Pompidou (Paris), Musée d’Aquitaine (Bordeaux), Artothèque de Pessac, Artothèque du Conseil Général de la Gironde, Collection d'art contemporain de Mérignac. Private Collections.
Portfolio
Projet Atgol (from 2010)
Atgol is a fictional character immersed in the reality of Google Earth, a visual reality with no
tangible presence, no volume, relief or depth.
These works are not photographs but screenshots,
lifted from the slither of space screening our gaze, just behind the flat surface on which images are
imprinted, seemingly protecting us and pacifying our relationship with the image, rendering it neutral,
banal almost and innocent. Such images are neither close to us nor far removed, they are everyday images, at
once domestic and domesticated, informing us of a so-called ‘virtual’ reality and its potential uses. A
reality which has no existence, but yet exists.
In some places, when certain details appear
familiar, Atgol has a heightened sense of bearing witness to a disappearing world, while finding himself
before a prefiguration of the near future, a future which is already there. Is this an image in the process
of becoming, tragically dragging along the world in its wake? On what ruins do such images stand and what
exactly is falling into ruin? Atgol does not yet know what is being lost or what will be laid to rest in the
tomb these images form.
Translated by Lucy Edwards
Portfolio
Documents potentiels - Une prison dans la cite (Prison in the City) 2008 - 2012
A photograph could never compare with what prison embodies or what being imprisoned means, and in
this series of works, it was never JCG’s intention to portray the reality of prison life. Rather he sought
to shed light on a handful of those elements which most stood out, without seeking to adopt a mimetic
stance.
Translated by Lucy Edwards
Portfolio
Documents Potentiels – Chambres (Bedrooms) – 2006 - 2010
Documents potentiels is the generic title of a group of projects in which JCG adopts a form rooted in the typology of spaces where similar is not synonymous with equal. Resemblance is not the name of the game here, but rather differences and gaps within a norm which is generally imposed and viewed as outside self.
‘The work resonates within us in elliptic fashion, giving voice to a common
poetry. A thousand stories immediately spring to mind, intruding into what at first sight seems a statement
of fact. JCG uses technique and format in his meticulous construction of projection surfaces which take us
to the very frontier of things and their representation, at the threshold of explanations and stories we are
invited to invent or rediscover.' Éric Martinez & Delphine Costedoat in overworld-blog, 07.07.2011
Translated by Lucy Edwards
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