Alix Cléo’s exhibition at the Bibliothèque nationale de France
19/01/2015 – Paris
The Louis Roederer Foundation is currently accompanying the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) on the exhibition dedicated to Alix Cléo Roubaud: ’Quinze minutes la nuit au rythme de la respiration’ (‘Fifteen Minutes Overnight at Breathing Rhythm’). It is the first retrospective dedicated to the work of an exceptional artist, about whom Michel Janneau, the Foundation’s General Secretary, states:
We discovered Alix Cléo Roubaud’s work thanks to Hélène Giannecchini’s research, rewarded with the Louis Roederer Photography Grant in 2012. I happened to be one of the panel members, and I will never forget how I felt when I learned of the photographer’s tragic fate—the death, at 31, of an artist who was so remarkably intelligent and so unique in her approach to photography, which incidentally, she had only been practising for four years. Alix Cléo Roubaud adopted a radical approach to the application of her audacious theories, without pre-established codes and without negatives. Her art was entirely centred on the printing process, studio work, alchemy, and solitude. She experimented with darkness and dazzling light, with over-exposure and under-exposure, as though she was replacing the ‘greyness’ of everyday life with black and white. This passionate and exacting quest, which was so fundamentally artistic, attracted our attention and our affection, and resulted in our decision to support an exhibition that we perceive to be an extraordinary revelation.
© Alix Cléo Roubaud
Photographs by Alix Cléo Roubaud : ‘Fifteen Minutes Overnight at Breathing Rhythm’
BnF, François-Mitterrand Library, Paris
From 28 October 2014 to 1 February 2015
