Hors les murs | Les Ateliers des Capucins, Brest

Nicolas Floc'h | Initium Maris

Fri 3 Dec 2021 — Sat 12 Mar 2022 , de 13:00 à 19:00

 “Initium Maris refers to the region of Finistère, that most westerly land, and to its Latin etymology, Finis Terrae, the end of the earth. This project takes us to ‘where the sea begins’, to explore the part of the coast that is submerged, on an expedition to see and think the invisible.” Nicolas Floc’h

For this first major exhibition by Passerelle at the Ateliers des Capucins, the contemporary art centre is presenting the photographic work of Nicolas Floc’h. He observes the great issues facing society, especially economic mechanisms and changes in the climate. For some ten years now, the artist has striven to represent the undersea world, particularly the various habitats and landscapes it comprises, through the photographic missions he has initiated. Through the representations he constructs, Nicolas Floc’h becomes a guide, a producer of images/works of art, while also creating documentary evidence of the state of that environment at a given moment, which can equally well be used by oceanographers, marine experts or educators. But first and foremost, the images produced open up a new chapter in the history of landscape art which has passed unnoticed by the great art movements. Whereas the paintings of the nineteenth-century Orientalists popularised the little-known but much dreamed-about landscapes of the Far East, the photographs in the Initium Maris project by Nicolas Floc’h reveal a very real world, although unknown to the vast majority of people. Indeed, the visions of the documentaries by the explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau or the animated film Finding Nemo from Pixar Studios are very incomplete, as they ignore a very large part of the undersea world,... [lire plus]

 

The Initium Maris exhibition in figures:

  • 150 days at sea with the ketch ‘OAO’ (2019-2021), workshop and expedition base
  • 3000 nautical miles covered between Saint-Nazaire and Saint-Malo
  • 70 dives (freediving or scuba) between -2 and -50 m.
  • 11 trips and series of water columns between - 2 and -150m
  • 6 dives undertaken in Japan
  • 21 days of Oceanographic campaign on board the ship ‘Thalassa’ during the CheReef campaign.
  • 9 HROV (undersea robot) dives between 700 and 1800m depth

Initium Maris is produced by artconnexion and supported by the Fondation de France as part of its programme ‘The future of coastal and sea worlds’, in partnership with Ifremer, FEDER Bretagne, MNHN, Concarneau, Log-Ulco/University of Lille, CEAC, University of Lille, University of Tsukuba, marine station of Shimoda, Japan, Editions GwinZegal, OAO, Cap vers la nature, Concarneau.

The Initium Maris exhibition is produced by Passerelle Centre d’art contemporain, Brest, Les Ateliers des Capucins, La Fondation Thalie, Brussels, and Vannes photo festival.

 

Free admission