Ange Leccia Ruins of Love

“Since the very beginning and until today, Leccia’s work has taken up residence at the margins of reality - not far enough out to be absurd, but just beyond the ordinary. In other words, right where a view can become an image. Images, what’s more, were always what Leccia was about, who got his first Super 8 camera at the time he was “trying out” a secondary school diploma in art in Corsica at the end of the 60’s. In 1971, at the age of 19, he made the first of the films that today constitute a phenomenal image bank that he is still building up and into which he dips, totally unchronologically.(...)”
“Paradoxically, Leccia’s “images” (which he considers similar to “imagineers”, as Walt Disney called the technicians recruited at the end of the 50’s to create perfect illusions for his first Disneyland) are rooted in a profound desire to produce a show. Whether we’re talking about his “arrangements” or his video installations, films and exhibitions, this outlook coordinates the whole so that the moment of experiencing the artwork is something far greater than an image.” (1) “Leccia’s approach outflanks the principles of communication according to which events have to be explained to make them accessible to consciousness so that everything would be transparent and under control. Whereas a newspaper would treat aech item separately, one following the other, Leccia renders them simultaneous and replays the inexorable duality usaually seen as an unfortunate necessity. Not only does this disjunction persist in terms of content, the shots also end up entangled and seemingly responding to one another (...)”

“The flow of images weakens our bearings, and at the same time also serves as a transcription of the complexity of the contemporary world(...)” (2) The second space in the gallery will feature the video-work Ruins of Love II, 2006, created in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in a former prison camp that now houses the Genocide Museum. The walls of the room will be painted blueblack and the video will be projected onto a white screen. The camera tracks slowly along the barbed wire barrier, closing in or pulling back from the wire which, in the shadow of the night, becomes tinged with glowing shades of yellow. At regular intervals, inscriptions enter the frame and questions the viewer.The first room will exhibit a series of photographs, also taken in Cambodia.

(1) Eric Troncy
(2) Fabien Danesi

in Rencontre 8 Eric Troncy/ Ange Leccia/ Fabien Danessi
Ed. Images Modernes/ Almine Rech, 2005