© Jacques Leblond
Photo taken at Fabienne Verdier’s exhibition ‘Mute’, Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris, January 2026
With a brush or with a camera each artist plays with perspectives.
People in the exhibition interrupt their perambulation, letting the paintings come to them. Their eyes follow the white ribbon - oscillating, leaping, expanding into space. Then they move on to another painting.
People looking at the photographs also examine the painting, focusing on the ribbon too. The background of the painting blends into the background of the photograph, worked into one same black by the artist photographer. As if they were visiting the exhibition, they follow the ribbon with their eyes too until their visual trajectory is interrupted by the visitors’ various oddities.
The motif on the jumper is intriguing; its white checks, the same color as the frantic serpentine, set stillness against it.
The three hooded characters are puzzling with their outdated attire. Are they part of some medieval role-play? Maybe these are not people but sculptures. In the photograph there is room for doubt, unlike in the exhibition. These are stone mourners, heavy and solid, from a set of eighty-two figures.
Two mourners contemplate the ribbon, positioned in front of the painting by museum staff using winches or motorized platforms. A third one looks away. With his back to the painting, he seems to be moving towards us, his face in the darkness.
The blur softens the harshness of the stone and loosens the folds of the robes. The figures are about twenty-five centimeter tall, but the sly photographer makes them look as if they were the size of a human being, the size of the visitor with the mountain sweater on the other picture.
Stone eyes moving; human eyes fixed.
Alternating stillness and movement, speeding up and slowing down. Moving from visitor to ribbon, from ribbon to visitor, from one photograph to the next.
Painting and photography interlace conflicting temporalities: times that loiter and linger, times that shrink and fly.
A boundless journey offered to the beholder.
© Jacques Leblond
Photo taken at Fabienne Verdier’s exhibition ‘Mute’, Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, Paris, January 2026
