Hélène Delprat

Dream More

Curated by Marion Wild

Dates: 4 Dec 03 - 14 Feb 04

C3 Gallery is pleased to present the U.S. premiere of French artist Hélène Delprat’s DREAM MORE, an exhibition of paper cut-outs, sculpture, photographs and video.

In viewing Hélène Delprat’s poetic, playful and often humorous oeuvre it is clear that her origins are in the world of theater. Staging and costume design are the artist’s primary fields of interest, and she extends her stage craft using a variety of techniques to produce original compositions such as the paper cut outs, on view here for the first time.

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Suspended from the ceiling are giant cut-outs featuring knights, elves and fantasy figures, the population of Delprat’s imaginary world, telling us their stories. The viewer, walking amongst them, enters Delprat’s dreams. In another piece, the cut-out coat, she uses her subtle, rigorous technique to create a magical costume.

The artist’s collaboration with photographer Eric Emo in the late 1990’s resulted in a series of small black and white photographs. During their collaboration Hélène placed herself at the center of the stage as Emo photographed her posing in different settings. Delprat has been working autonomously for the last couple of years, appeared on stage in costumes she has created, and photographing herself with the help of an automatic shutter release. These black and white pictures are poetic and despite their melancholy there is humor inherent in the works.

Delprat’s shoe sculpture links costume and lighting. Context and categories shift as she places a light bulb in each shoe instead of lighting the leather objects from without. The worn shoes receive illumination, they themselves become the carriers of light and their meaning is changed.

The video contains five individual sequences. One episode shows a humorous version of a fashion show as the artist appears, moving along the catwalk, in a black costume with white stripes. The video can be understood as a logical development of Delprat’s work of self-imaging after working in the medium of photography. The artist’s work, in all the media, draws us into a dream world and Hélène invites us to DREAM MORE.