Artist dossier
Cédric Delsaux
WPG.12 — Dark Celebration, 25 Mar – 13 May 2017 (EMOP)
- Born
- 1974, France; lives and works in Paris
- Formation
- Self-taught; parallel careers in commercial photography and personal projects
- Medium
- Staged and composited photography between fiction and document
- Record at the gallery
- WPG.12 Dark Celebration – Wild Project Gallery, Luxembourg (25 Mar – 13 May 2017), European Month of Photography
Cédric Delsaux is the artist of the gallery's final spring season. Born in 1974 and based in Paris, initially self-taught, he built parallel careers in commercial photography and in personal series that splice fiction into the documentary landscape. The work that made him famous is Dark Lens (begun 2004): Star Wars characters and hardware set down, with photographic plausibility, in real locations — first the periphery of Lille and the Paris banlieue, later the construction sites and towers of Dubai. The series won the Bourse du Talent in 2005 and became a book, The Dark Lens (Éditions Xavier Barral, 2011), with a preface by George Lucas, who wrote that "many artists have interpreted Star Wars in ways that extend well beyond anything we saw in the films" and counted this among the most singular. The Dubai chapter was exhibited as The Dark Lens — The Dubai Invasion – The Empty Quarter, Dubai (2011). The point of the series was never fan homage: it demonstrates how thoroughly perception of a real city passes through the filter of fiction.
The later series keep the method and darken the register. Nous resterons sur terre (2006–2008) examined the human relation to nature in the post-modern era; Zone de repli (2011–2014) took the Jean-Claude Romand affair as its point of departure; and Underground Society (2013–2015) plunged corporate places and figures into a troubling obscurity — survivors of an unnamed catastrophe, apocalyptic visions in which breakdowns follow one another without respite, the recurring anxieties of the present staged as tableaux.
It was Underground Society that came to Luxembourg. Dark Celebration – Wild Project Gallery, Luxembourg (25 Mar – 13 May 2017), record WPG.12 in this catalogue, was the gallery's entry in the 2017 European Month of Photography, the biennial festival edition that carried the city's photography institutions that spring; the French photography press, including 9 Lives Magazine, covered the show in April 2017. It proved to be one of the last exhibitions the gallery mounted. The full account — the series, the festival context, and Delsaux's career since — is at the exhibition history.
The Delsaux file
Sources
- EMOP Luxembourg (emoplux.lu), Dark Celebration: Cédric Delsaux, Wild Project Gallery, 2017.
- 9 Lives Magazine, "Dark Celebration par Cédric Delsaux à la Wild Project," 20 Apr 2017.
- L'Œil de la Photographie, "Cédric Delsaux, Underground Society."
- The Dark Lens, Éditions Xavier Barral, 2011, preface by George Lucas.
- The National (Abu Dhabi), on The Dark Lens — The Dubai Invasion at The Empty Quarter, Dubai, 2011.
- Cédric Delsaux, public portfolio and series notes (cedricdelsaux.com), on Dark Lens, Nous resterons sur terre, Zone de repli, and Underground Society.