Michael Kenna in Paris
Door kunstvlo op November 10, 2009 23:03. 560 comments
At the Bibliothèque National de la France, site Richelieu, there is a wonderful retrospective exhibition on the work of photographer Michael Kenna. The exposition is part of the second edition of the Photoquai Photography Biennale (an intiative of the Musée du Quai Branly).
Although it is a retrospective exposition it is manageable for visitors. Compared to museums such as the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay that really try to kill you with an overload of objects, this exhibition is a god’s gift. If I count correctly, 8 themes nicely structure Kenna’s work. And there is also a virtual exhibition which I highly recommend!
Central in Michael Kenna’s work are landscapes: people are completely absent. The French photographer Eugène Atget, known for his pictures of Paris in the second half of the 19th century, is his great example. Kenna’s work is very poetic because of the way he plays with different perspectives, lines and shadows. It is far from boring (a resentment that often goes together with landschapes) because he is capable of giving the landscapes a high sense of dynamism.
In the following way, curator Anne Biroleau describes the way Kenna sees the sky: ‘Le ciel, chez Kenna, n’est pas l’Ether des poètes, cristal pur, immateriél et transparant, mais une atmosphère, théâtre du vent, des nuages, de la lumière sourde, de la pluie, de la brume, du brouillard, des fumées. Il est une manifestation des puissances cosmiques, non une métaphore’.
To conclude. Michael Kenna definitely makes Art but when you take a closer look at his website, you see he also makes a lot of commercial work. Adds for Audi, Saab, and so on…
Funny.