Hélène Bascoul (FR)
Text written by GHA
Hélène Bascoul’s black and white aquatints in small formats depict scenes from everyday life in a grainy, contrasting texture that lends the images a melancholic tone.
The skilful use of a coarser formal language with clearly broken lines and rich contrasts, ranging from saturated black patches to almost blinding white surfaces, creates an intriguing tension between the dramatic expression and the everyday motifs in the works. This tension between form and motif conveys an ambivalent experience that characterises the prints.
Even if the compositions at first glance might seem reminiscent of hastily taken snapshots, there is a serenity in the calm depictions of everyday situations. An attentive tenderness fills the pictures and the attempt to capture life as it flies by.
Nevertheless, the rendering is slightly distorted, which associates the images with memories or faded photographs. Combined with the grainy textures, this distorted sensation leaves the impression that the images almost dissolve before our eyes, drawing a melancholic veil over the everyday scenes by hinting at their transience. Bascoul’s ambivalent prints give the viewer the opportunity to reflect on the domestic scenes and spaces that make up the majority of our lives and to appreciate their precarious nature.
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