Vallée des Merveilles 2
In 2014, Philippe Durand explored the Valley of Wonders in the South of France. There he discovered an exceptional archeological heritage of approximately 40,000 rock engravings dating from 3000 BCE to the present day. Considering the site an open-air museum, the artist worked at delivering a photographic restitution of the surroundings. His first adaptation of Vallée des Merveilles 2 for the outdoors used inflatable boulders to playfully show the topography of the site. The result was reminiscent of a theme-park attraction. A nearly 90-m2 photograph featuring modern graffiti of Mickey Mouse completed the picture, illustrating the extraordinary encounter between traces of the past and those of the present.
Feu (au lac)
Toying with the evocative power of images, Feu (au lac) rekindles humans’ ancestral fascination with fire. Philippe Durand photographed the infinite fleetness of fire, thereby capturing the primitive shapes of light, going back to the roots of photography. By means of lenticular imagery, a form of pre-digital GIF, he superimposed three different views to restitute the movement of fluctuating flames according to the viewer’s position. Customized for Vevey, the installation rose out of Lake Geneva, echoing Deep Purple’s hit Smoke on the Water, written in the neighboring town of Montreux in 1971. It also hinted at a popular local expression, “the lake ain’t on fire”, meaning that there is no burning rush.
