Aurélie Pétrel

Aurélie Pétrel’s photographic practice questions the status of the image, its use and the mechanisms of its production. Rooted in duration, her research aims to bring the act of taking a shot back to the centre of multisensory thinking by means of spatial devices. Eight cities chosen for what they embody on the world stage form the starting point of her photographic research and works. These begin with the artist scouting for future “latent shots” that are waiting to be triggered, revealed, activated, displaced, made into a hybrid and/or transferred, becoming a support, ranging from sculpture to architecture to the scenic installations she creates in her joint work with director Vincent Roumagnac (Pétrel I Roumagnac (duo)). Aurélie Pétrel raises the question of the “mutation-mutability” of an image, its potential for fracturing, not only in itself but also in its ability to disturb the experience of multi-perception. For the artist, a single shot generates a multitude of different points of view. Time and space continuously overlap, and remain out of joint. The image, a moving vector of this spatio-temporal elasticity, redistributes itself and in its consecutive metamorphoses hinders its consensual absorption, a single and definitive perception, a decisive moment and position. Recently, the latency of the image has been rethought by its translation into data (Tracks 3, Toronto 2019) or, paradoxically, by its quasi disappearance by dint of the “process” (Alterations-Reactivation), transport, and redistribution (AxIonométrie 2 inactinique, Fiac Projects, Paris 2018). Using formal tools and the intellectual processes of both artists and researchers, Pétrel combines a visual and conceptual approach in a programmatic series of scenarios, where the exhibition format varies each time, as does the interpretative dimension of each partition, latent image, and/or of any form awaiting metamorphosis. Her work is exhibited in France and overseas. Solo projects are represented by the Galerie Ceysson & Bénétière and collective works (Pétrel I Roumagnac) by the Galerie Valéria Cétraro.