Yann Pocreau - Solar Folds
Redefining the boundaries of wine and art.
Immersive abstraction
Based on photograms, this unique wine space is a nod to what happens in a dark room. Meticulously thought out to create both short moments of wonder and a certain dynamism, it keeps in mind the idea of a composed, framed space, that summons the geometry of the photograms.
Solar Folds
Taking as a starting point two photograms from the "Answers to Painting" series made specifically for this cellar, I had the pleasure of thinking of this space as a more immersive work, a space close to what happens in the darkroom when I work on my images. For many years, the photographic medium has been at the heart of my work, and these days I am interested in the questions raised by the history of the medium and its processes. I see these photograms and light experiments as answers to painting. Although formalist and very close to abstract painting, geometric abstraction, this body of work is initially purely photographic and is for me a way of reflecting the image through codes that belong to the pictorial universe.
Here I wanted to extrapolate, to think of the complete space as I think of my images, to reflect this cellar as a whole. A certain play of thickness makes the understanding of the layers more abstract, the mirrored brass blurs this legibility of the surface, multiplies it, shapes it like the filters I use for my photographic experiments. The back wall responds gently to them, through the folds of the brass, through the formalism summoned by the circular arrangement of the bottles. This play of forms and thickness allowed me to think of this space as if I had composed an image, resolutely abstract and geometric. I am thus interested in light, in the surfaces that reflect or fix it. The choice of materials, walnut and mirror brass, the immutable inscription of two images in this space have been meticulously thought out to create both short moments of wonder, a certain dynamism while keeping in mind the idea of a composed, framed space, the one in sum that the geometry of the photographs convokes.
In the past years, my research has been focused on the narrative contributions suggested by the presence of light when staged in specific places. In my most recent projects, I put forward not only traces of a physical collaboration between my body and space, but also that of light and its presence as a subject.
Having now for some time evacuated the human presence of the photographic content, even opted more often for other types of mediums than the photography, I developed a series of intervention or work leaning on the artificial light, its materiality and its essential contribution to my photographic thought. The questions of the materiality of light, reflection and colors have taken over the notions that have been part of my work so far. Thus, some of my projects had the particularity that they allowed the projection machine, in the light of it, to become the raw material of my work. White or colored, referring to the film, the light bulb, then the obsolete Kodak color chart, these light interventions led me on new, more exploratory, more abstract tracks.
''What a great challenge CellArt offered me. I immediately wanted to propose an environment that would combine both the needs of the most demanding wine collectionneurs and what is in the off-screen of my images, behind the colored fields of specifically-designed photograms, behind the folds of light. The incredible engineering capacity of CellArt convinced me to let my creativity express itself without any boundaries, reinforced by their unique knowledge about wine conservation, woodworking, and art to create an uncompromising space''
Yann Pocreau
