Opening 1.03, 18:30

Encounter with the artist 2.03 – 15:00

Curators: François Cheval, Yasmine Chemali

A colourful world, a world in which reality is divided into sequences as if in a film. Photography has so many difficulties in understanding reality that it must create its own version, and if it is to do that, it may as well reflect a personal world, under the amused and protective gazes of Henri Matisse and Josef Albers.
Sometimes, the photographer must return to the fundamentals, knowing how to set values and arrange colours on sheets of paper, letting them live and arranging them. Perception cannot be thought. It is self-evident. It cannot be measured. What if, as Jessica Backhaus wishes, it were explored by associating feelings and virtues with primary colours. A vision that is simultaneously reassuring and disturbing, between pleasure and questioning.
Of course, colour is make-up. It deceives and seduces us. Observe too closely and become hypnotised. The images of Jessica Backhaus also possess a hypnotic power. And yet they are nothing more than paper, light, pure colour and shadow, yet somehow they provide the images with a vibrancy, a life of their own.

Biography

Jessica Backhaus (Germany/USA) was born in Cuxhaven, Germany in 1970 and grew up in an artistic family. At the age of sixteen, she moved to Paris, where she later studied photography and visual communications. Here she met Gisele Freund in 1992, who became her mentor. In 1995 her passion for photography drew her to New York, where she assisted photographers, pursued her own projects and lived until 2009.
Jessica Backhaus is regarded as one of the most distinguished voices in contemporary photography in Germany today. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, MARTa Herford and the Kunsthalle Erfurt. To date, she has ten publications to her name. Nine of them are published by Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg.
Her photographs are in many prominent art collections including Taunus Sparkasse, Germany, Art Collection Deutsche Börse, Germany, ING Art Collection, Belgium, Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA and the Margulies Collection, Miami, USA. Jessica Backhaus is represented by Robert Morat Galerie in Berlin, Galerie Anja Knoess in Cologne, Petra Becker/ International Art Bridge in Meggen, Robert Klein Gallery in Boston, Bridgette Mayer Gallery in Philadelphia, MiCamera Gallery in Milan, Carlos Carv lho
ARTE CONTEMPORÂNEA in Lisbon and Wouter van Leeuwen Gallery in Amsterdam.