Pascal Navarro

The image lies at the centre of Pascal Navarro's oeuvre, and through it, it is time, far more than representation, which is often challenged. The conditions whereby the images appear and above all disappear convey his interest in the work of memory. From now on, whether they are printed using solarization on paper (Un week-end à la maison), or whether they are revealed during a fleeting moment (Les phosphorescence), or whether they are composed in the slowness of a gesture a thousand times repeated (the Eden Lake drawings), Pascal Navarro's works invariably carry their own time-frame within them. The progressive erasure of representation and its process-based application offers the viewer an evolving visual experience. We find this dimension again in certain sculptures which depict frozen objects, petrified in the wake of a lengthy process of sedimentation. In order to withstand time's erosion and their disappearance, these sculptures seem, paradoxically, to have made the choice of separating themselves from the living world. Translated by Simon Pleasance