As part of this exhibition celebrating the centenary of Art Deco architecture, I wanted to offer a unique sensory and conceptual immersion, at the crossroads of experimental film and contemporary photography. Combining past and present, Resonances explores the cultural, aesthetic and historical connections between two major cities: Paris, the birthplace of this iconic style, and Shanghai, where it was reinvented under the influence of the Orient.
As a dialectical exploration, the exhibition plays on the tension between tradition and avant- garde, figuration and abstraction, past and future.
– The experimental film « Lorsque la Tour Eiffel rêve, elle contemple le Bund » (‘When the Eiffel Tower dreams, it contemplates the Bund’) explores a poetic dialogue between Paris
and Shanghai, two metropolises united by the Art Deco style of the 1920s. Through the prism of dance and architecture, the film pays homage to the innovative design of this period and celebrates the liberating, nascent modernity of contemporary dance, embodied by the figure of Isadora Duncan. In homage to the auteur films of the period, it adopts a visual style inspired by experimental silent cinema, incorporating black and white, a square format and the play of prism and light in the shot. However, I wanted to avoid simple ‘imitation’ by introducing modern techniques (drone, steady cam, digital effects, artificial intelligence) into the making of the film to create an immersive, contemporary experience. It’s a bridge between past and present, where Art Deco is reinterpreted through an innovative cinematographic aesthetic. The film also questions the way in which Art Deco, at once rigid in its motifs and lavish in its ornamentation, served as a backdrop to an era of rupture, when individuality and artistic daring were celebrated. By weaving together architectural forms and contemporary dance, ‘When the Eiffel Tower dreams, it contemplates the Bund’ celebrates both the permanence of structures and the transience of movement, while paying tribute to the legacy of Isadora Duncan, who liberated bodies just as Art Deco liberated forms.
– The photographs capture the light and shadows that dance across the iconic façades of Paris and Shanghai, capturing the visual language of Art Deco in its geometric and ornamental play. These shots become both witnesses and actors in a narrative that extends beyond simple architectural homage. By focusing on the lines of the buildings, the details of their structure and the harmony that emanates from this aesthetic, these works invite us to revisit the way in which architecture shapes not only our spaces, but also our imaginations.
The exhibition is a dialogue in which each work-film or photograph-weaves together a shared reflection on the legacy of Art Deco and its resonance across time and space. Between the triumphant modernity of Paris and the cosmopolitan effervescence of Shanghai, Resonances becomes an artistic bridge, an aesthetic cartography of the contemporary world shaped by a style that, one hundred years after its emergence, continues to inspire and provoke.
Bruno Aveillan
