For 2020 Paris Photo’s edition, Galerie Anne-Sarah Bénichou (Paris) and Jezca Gallery (Timisoara) team up to present a booth based on two temporalities: Romania of the 1960s-1980s with Constant Flondor (1936-) and Decebal Scriba (1944-) which will be put into perspective with the contemporary period through Laurent Montaron (1972-) and Pusha Petrov (1984-). The approach of these four artists relates to perception, using notably image duplication methods as a basis for reflections around the artist function within the society and its way to perceive the world. Constant Flondor, historical figure, founding member of the Sygma group, and bridgehead of the eastern avant-garde in the 1970s, has led photographic researches on the boundaries between the reality of creation and the objective reality. His artistic process (photographs, films), is characterized by an analytical caution focused on observation. Hence, chance results to be registered with a resolutely rigorous manner, firstly as documentation and then as an autonomous artistic medium. He shares common roots with Decebal Scriba who develops his condition of conceptual artist during Romanian dictatorship. Already presented last year by galerie Anne-Sarah Bénichou, it is relevant to propose others elements of the artist’s work this year. Through his photograph’s practice, he frequently uses duplication to produce philosophical and political reflections. This duplication finds continuity in the work of images multiplication made by the French artist Laurent Montaron who is inspired by the history of technology to analyse belief’s mechanisms. By investigating the way innovations have continually inspired new courses to observe and understand the world, he reveals the paradoxes which accompany our representations of modernity. This subject is also at the very heart of the work of the Romanian and Paris based artist Pusha Petrov who explores through her practice our perception by confronting it to its duality and contradictions. Her research focuses on incongruous objects which unveil, behind our immediate vision, a concealed identity.
