Insolé
25th May - 13th July 2024

Image: 130 x 105 cm
Frame: 134 x 109 cm
The phrase «Malgré l'inexistence de dieu, rien n'est permis» («Despite the non-exis-
tence of God, nothing is allowed») originated in a silkscreen poster from a collec-
tion of brochures, leaflets, facsimiles and newspaper adaptations produced by the
group «Pour une critique révolutionnaire» («For a revolutionary critique»), formed
during the events of 1968 by Roger Langlais, Guy Bodson and Bernard Pécheur.
Resonating with the Situationist ideas of reappropriation, this poster turned Dos-
toyevsky's maxim «If God didn't exist, everything would be allowed» on its head,
and appeared as an invitation to collectively redefine the norms of society. Today,
the re-enacted image is tinged with the disillusionment of the utopias of the late
twentieth century and the resurgence of religious beliefs. Presented side by side,
Ciel d'Elée and Malgré- linexistencededieurienestpermis link the earliest attempts
at emancipation from a divine narrative with the most recent, tracing a continuity
from one revolution to the next.

Image: 130 x 105 cm
Frame: 134 x 109 cm
It was in the night of Elea, an ancient Greek city near Naples, that Parmenides
first assumed that the Moon reflected the light of the Sun or that the Earth was a
sphere. By seeking out the logic at work in nature through his observations rather
than mythological accounts, he and other pre-Socratic philosophers helped to build
a new way of understanding the world.
This photograph of the sky over Elea was taken almost 2,500 years after Parme-
nides, by attaching a camera to a motor synchronised with the Earth's rotation,
which made it possible to follow the course of the stars and produce a perfectly
fixed image of the celestial vault.
Usually, no matter where in the world they are taken, photographs capture the
light of the Sun reflected on the world around us. However, in this photograph, the
light captured does not come from our Sun, but from thousands of distant suns.

Photography, pigment print on Hahnemühle FineArt Baryta paper
Image: 130 x 105 cm
Frame: 134 x 109 cm
In the early days of photography, photographers would craft and apply the emulsion for their images themselves. Then, quickly, they were offered a multitude of ready-to-use supports for both shooting and printing. The brand, packaging, or slogan of these supports, promising particular contrasts, depth, or tones, became synonymous with unique perspectives on the world.
The series "Sun-Exposed Papers" presents packages of black-and-white photographic papers from the 1920s intended to be exposed under an enlarger and developed using a developer (silver gelatin bromide paper from Grieshaber) or designed for contact printing, darkening in sunlight (Grieshaber citrate paper, Lumière & Jougla, Cellofix).
The papers, preserved away from light for over a hundred years, are photographed here as they are being unpacked in full sunlight.

Photography, pigment print on Hahnemühle FineArt Baryta paper
Image: 130 x 105 cm
Frame: 134 x 109 cm
In the early days of photography, photographers would craft and apply the emulsion for their images themselves. Then, quickly, they were offered a multitude of ready-to-use supports for both shooting and printing. The brand, packaging, or slogan of these supports, promising particular contrasts, depth, or tones, became synonymous with unique perspectives on the world.
The series "Sun-Exposed Papers" presents packages of black-and-white photographic papers from the 1920s intended to be exposed under an enlarger and developed using a developer (silver gelatin bromide paper from Grieshaber) or designed for contact printing, darkening in sunlight (Grieshaber citrate paper, Lumière & Jougla, Cellofix).
The papers, preserved away from light for over a hundred years, are photographed here as they are being unpacked in full sunlight.

Photography, pigment print on Hahnemühle FineArt Baryta paper
Image: 130 x 105 cm
Frame: 134 x 109 cm
In the early days of photography, photographers would craft and apply the emulsion for their images themselves. Then, quickly, they were offered a multitude of ready-to-use supports for both shooting and printing. The brand, packaging, or slogan of these supports, promising particular contrasts, depth, or tones, became synonymous with unique perspectives on the world.
The series "Sun-Exposed Papers" presents packages of black-and-white photographic papers from the 1920s intended to be exposed under an enlarger and developed using a developer (silver gelatin bromide paper from Grieshaber) or designed for contact printing, darkening in sunlight (Grieshaber citrate paper, Lumière & Jougla, Cellofix).
The papers, preserved away from light for over a hundred years, are photographed here as they are being unpacked in full sunlight.

Image: 130 x 105 cm
Frame: 134 x 109 cm
Before development, Ektachrome slide films are green monochromes. This color is the result of the overlay of 18 emulsions on a transparent plastic support of 0.18 mm in thickness in an assembly designed for the film to record the world in its own unique way.



Solo exhibition from 24 May to 13 July 2024
Opening on Saturday 25 May 2024, 2pm to 7pm.
For his new exhibition at the gallery, Laurent Montaron presents a series of works that interrogate the way we engage with the world through narratives.
In the television interview "To Tell a Story," broadcast on the English channel Channel 4 in 1983, Susan Sontag already highlighted the duality of storytelling: a tool for recounting facts, but also a means of creating fictions. Today more than ever, in the wake of social media and algorithms devoted to the attention economy, storytelling has become ubiquitous. Due to the ambiguity of its definition and because our beliefs attach to stories we identify with, it now appears that various narratives coexist and have replaced facts.
Laurent Montaron's exhibition, by tracing a genealogy of our rational thought (Ciel d'Élée, Malgré l'inexistence de dieu) and traversing the technologies of photography and cinema (Papiers Insolés, Ektachrome, Kodak Yellow, Voice of Theater), invites us to reflect on the modes of transmission of our experience of the world, putting into perspective the role of narratives, including in the pursuit of an objective description of reality.
The exhibition's layout is designed in resonance with the artist's upcoming exhibition at the Rencontres de la Photographie d'Arles, to be presented from July 1, 2024, at the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie.