Unseen at the Gallery

One weekend of contemporary photography
in 23 Amsterdam based galleries

Presenting a program of undiscovered photography talent and unseen works by well-known photographers, over 20 galleries of Amsterdam initiated a weekend of photography. Supported by Unseen, this is a physical answer to digital fairs, as all the galleries can be visited on the spot throughout the city.

Galerie Caroline O’Breen participates with a duo-presentation
about the domination of the virtual image

Elsa Leydier – Transatlántica
&
Tasio Bidegain – Paris Syndrome

Elsa Leydier questions the dominant ways in which photography is exploited to represent the territories of the Amazon region and highlights the role of the image in the perception we have of the supposedly natural environment.
While Tasio Bidegain’s work manifests the tension between the real and fake, virtual and material images. He drew the presented images during the worldwide lockdown, trying to make sense of today’s online landscape by arranging and transforming photographic imagery into endlessly detailed drawings.

Elsa Leydier – Transatlántica

For the series Plátanos con Platino and Braços Verdes e Olhos Cheios de Asas, Elsa Leydier modifies the colors of her photographs made in the Amazon region to produce a visually explosive and luminous image. Braços Verdes e Olhos Cheios de Asas is a reminder of a degree to which the Amazon is glamorized by popular culture. Borrowing its language of luxury aesthetics, Leydier aims not at immersing the viewer in the lush greenery of the Amazon, but – quite the contrary – points at a misguiding romanticized nature of its representation. Plátanos con Platino is also about twisting the representations. The series investigates Chocó, the region known and spoken of only as of the poorest and most violent in Colombia. However it also happens to be one of the richest regions in the world in terms of its biodiversity, but the news doesn’t talk about that. Elsa Leydier is revealing Chocó’s luxuriance, a side less visible and often neglected.

By doing so, she breaks the vernacular image of the Amazon region and, by the means of photography, gives it back the values it has lost. She joins the wonder of the poet Garcia Marquez who wrote in 1954 when he discovered this region: “If someone had the idea to sow a banana tree, the fruits would have grown loaded with platinum nuggets.”

Her latest project, Brazil: System Error (#elenão), is no less topical and ideologically charged. Iconic clichéd images of Brazil found through internet search engines were digitally modified to produce a political statement against stereotyping.

Elsa Leydier (1988, France) is one of the finalists for the Encontros da Imagen Discovery Award 2020 and was one of the finalists of FOAM Talent in 2019. She exhibited Transatlántica in 2019 at Paris Photo, at the Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, and at Galerie Intervalle that represents her work in Paris. She won the Maison Ruinart Paris Photo Prize 2019 and is the winner of the 2019 Dior Prize for Young Talents Photography.

Tasio Bidegain

Tasio Bidegain – Paris Syndrome

Screenshots of riots, adds for face-masks, media footage covering the pandemic, classical paintings, and landscapes of cities in ruins are amongst the images that Tasio Bidegain encountered and drew during this worldwide lockdown.

The surgical sharpness of Bidegain’s drawings, mimicking the cold, systematic, and unsparing tone of the information cycle, contrasts with the enchanted reality of the pictures, weaving a constellation of modern narratives. In those “confined” photographs, taken in the empty streets or inside the monotony of an apartment, the banality of our routine, trash, flowers, or buildings suddenly reveals an appealing and chimerical glow. Through this editorial project, Tasio Bidegain intended to create a time-document that could encapsulate his artistic manifestations of the current global crisis.

The title Paris Syndrome refers to a condition experienced by some individuals when visiting Paris – a result of the extreme shock by discovering that Paris is not as beautiful as they have assumed. Such disorder is caused by the exclusively positive representations of the city in popular culture, which leads to an immense disappointment as the reality of experiencing the city is very different from the expectations: visitors are confronted with an overcrowded and littered city.

Tasio Bidegain (1996) graduated this year at the Photography department of the Rietveld Academy. He describes his working method as ‘etching on photography’. He scratches the photographs, causing the image to partially disappear and the white of the photo paper to become visible.