‘His family films and his ‘dreambook’ hover between intimate narration and soon-forgotten news. Here, I wanted him to show that he makes manipulated images blending violence and confidential disclosure.' Christian Lacroix`

CAHIER DES RÊVES 2008

Joël Bartoloméo plays the amateur anthropologist in short sequences taken as they happen in his own family life.

Since 1997 his focus has been on the way couples function and the attraction-repulsion syndrome involved.

In 2000 he began working on current events via photographic press reviews seen through the perspective of his own book of dreams: a combination of the topical with dreams, plus a return to narrative. He sees these videos as rooted in language, eyewitness accounts, interpretation and translation. Sometimes absurdity mingles with a touch of truth, sometimes a personal belief impacts on interpretation.

In 2006 he undertook a series of video self-portraits, some of them in the form of music clips intercut with chronicles, quotes or confidences.

Among the videos making up the exhibition are:

La Boîte Noire/The Black Box, 3’ 05’, 2004.

The title is a tribute to planes lost at sea in circumstances that have defied elucidation. This succession of press images contains a potentially infinite number of narratives: as if in the wings on a movie set, images of the fictional and the real intermingle in a kind of inventory of some unlikely world. The nostalgic side of these apparitions is underscored by a sound track by Nick Cave.

The Revolver, 4’ 32’, 2006.

The work begins with a series of ‘World‘ pages from the Paris daily Libération, followed by quotations from two philosophers on injustice and cruelty. It closes with a personal memory that has a touch of the news item about it.

Joël Bartoloméo

joelbartolomeo.free.fr

Prints produced by PICTO.

Joël Bartoloméo is represented by the gallery Alain Gutharc, Paris.