the Campagnes hallucinées | 2018-19
The Campagnes hallucinées series draws its inspiration from the collection of poems by Émile Verhaeren “Les Campagnes hallucinées” and “La ville tentaculaire” which address the industrial and urban invasion of the countryside and its inevitable demise. This series allows the artist to take a contemplative look at the aesthetics of the utility building and try to capture a tiny part of the identity of these urban landscapes.
Beyond the observation of this anthropization, of the birth of these new urban landscapes, there is a fascination with the poetry that these urban works emit, superposition, accumulations, tangles.
labastide, labastide2 | 2017-18
The Labastide series is the culmination of a research and creation residency for a fortnight in Labastide d’Armagnac (40). The challenge of this residence was to restore plastically three building sites in the village: the renovation of the church, a private yard, and the extension of the Town Hall. In addition to machinery and construction equipment (cranes, scaffolding), the artist has translated what her senses have perceived: the accumulation, the entanglement of lines, the jerky sounds (of the jackhammer), the textures … This series is enriched with fifteen prints, on the occasion of the exhibition Dialogues at the Center of Contemporary Art of the Landes of Mont de Marsan, giving birth to the series Labastide2.
A fascination emerges from the interweaving of works of art and road networks, transcribed from photographs of Roissy, Tokyo or Kyoto and memories of readings Emile Verhaeren. The infrastructural works are exhumed or laid bare as vestiges of the civilization of the automobile queen and a massive urbanization, devouring nature and landscapes. They compose an aesthetic universe, of which the graphic play on the lines or on the curves and the replica of the embossing, reveal the poetic power. The quasi-surgical look on them and the addition of blue in the black intensify the sensation of their presence.
From the travel photographs of friends returning from a long stay in Tokyo and Kyoto, a virtual journey takes place, which seeks to restore the architectural ambiances in a context of dense urbanization. The theme of the infrastructure developed in the series “Still Life” is central to it, and there is the theme of interweaving with the city.
This second version of the series I do not know Africa sees the color disappear for the benefit of a range of gray, which further emphasizes the abstraction of airport locations indifferent to their contexts and their soils. The attenuation of the contrast between the different gray and the white of the embossings reinforces this abstract character. The assembly of the already engraved plates according to graphic rhymes and the reshuffling of the geographical borders or limits of right of way also.
je ne connais pas l’Afrique | 2011
On the occasion of a course of contemporary art on the theme of Africa, Blandine Galtier seeks to evoke this continent, very present in her family tree but of which she knows almost nothing. To avoid the pitfall of fantasies or clichés, it is engaged in a methodical exercise of overflight of the territory and cartography, staked by the representation of the main international airports of the African countries, thus keeping the doors of the unknown. The aerial views gleaned from Google Earth and the built-up grip of airport infrastructures testify to the confrontation between the implacable geometry of architecture and the topography of the various cities.
With the help of a game of scale, this series reflects the complexity of the biological universe of microbes and bacteria, living organisms apprehended here in their formal configuration as so many micro architectures and abstract paintings. Experienced on this occasion, the technique of engraving the black way allows both to obtain a deeper black and effects of material on the white of the paper.