When Black is Burned

Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporânea gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition by Marguerite Bornhauser in Portugal, showing the works of previous series (Moisson Rouge, When Black is Burned, Étoile Retine) that have given the artist more visibility, as well as “Do Ghosts Have Shadows?”, a new series in colaboration with the sculptor Léa Dumayet. Not beeing organized in distinguished zones and taking advantage  of their sculptural dimension in dialogue with space, in a dynamic of free associations they tell a story coming from other stories. Le Bruit des Cactus, entirely installed in the side room, also plays with the longitudinality and gray walls and with the irregular display of the images in the space, referring us back to the idea of a sheet music. In an intimate and detailed record, it is part of the idea of wandering as a practice in photography and in travel. Crossing the route with the musicality of the Californian landscape, it captures fragments and snapshots of everyday life, sensorial contents that are the result from the experience with the world and ourselves where the poetic encounter is fulfilled with the allusion to a poem by Rimbaud making explicit this relationship between walking and photography.

In common with the works in the other series, there is a form of visual writing that narrows the difference between the real and the fictional, narrating an action that takes place outside the limits of the image, and which, therefore, is forbidden to the viewer. This event is gradually shown through a game of revealing and concealment given by the mysterious shadows, lights, textures or elements such as outlines of plants or deep shadows that, increasing the tension in the composition, suggest a fiction captured and thematized in the photograph. The artist involves the viewer in a complex exploration of sensory perception through the recognition of shapes, contours or the simple appreciation of different textures, allowing her/him to experience reality only through sensations. Reinventing everyday objects and giving them a pictorial and fictional sense, she emphasizes and enhances a powerful spectrum of tones and hues, where vivid and saturated colors, precise composition and evocative fascination, each element carries equal importance.

Léa Dumayet and Marguerite Bornhauser show five new pieces made in collaboration: “Do Ghosts Have Shadows?”. Marguerite Bornhauser's photographs are printed on transparent plexiglass plates; Léa Dumayet arches and strains them in space to the limit. This time, Marguerite Bornhauser proposes to show new negative image works digitally painted. Here we find a search for poetry in darkness and chiaroscuro, which comes from her last series “When Black is Burned”. This series of photographic sculptures allows us to imagine and better see worlds hidden in darkness, in a ghostly universe. Our gaze is attracted by the light that comes from this darkness that makes the colors, brightness and shades stand out. Léa Dumayet uses cast iron weights, plexiglass plates and elastic tensioners. With a few simple gestures, they unite the objects to create light drawings as if they were flying in the air. The rounded shapes of these sculptures give them a soft side, although they are on the verge of bursting. We feel the fragility and the strength. The visible nodes and hooks partially tell how the structure holds up, not revealing all that it seems. Since 2017, the date of their first duo exhibition “Vu du pont” at Espace Ourcq in Paris, Léa Dumayet and Marguerite Bornhauser continue to create installations that combine sculpture and photography. The “Chimera” series was presented in several places in 2021 and in 2022: Galerie Beaurepaire, Galerie Madé, Center d’Art Le Grand Café in Saint-Nazaire and in the Fértil association in Paris.

Marguerite Bornhauser was born in 1989 and lives and works in Paris. Her first solo show was at the museum of European Photography in Paris (MEP) in 2019. Her work has been shown in several art institutions, galleries and art festivals in many different countries such as France (Paris, Arles, Toulouse, Deauville) Cincinnati, London, Brussels, Portugal, Istanbul, Switzerland and shortly in Japan. Marguerite Bornhauser adds editorial work to her photographic research. Her first self published book, Plastic Colors, was selected among the finalists of the first book award of Mack books in 2015 and published in 2017. Her book "8" was published by Poursuite in 2018. In 2019 she published Red Harvest with the same publisher. She published her fourth book with Editions La Martinière in 2021 and is about to publish her fifth book. In 2020, she won the Photo London x Nikon Emerging Photographer of the Year award.

Léa Dumayet was born in 1990 and lives and works between Paris and Milan. Her work has been shown at several exhibitions in Paris: Galerie du CROUS (2015), Galerie Perrotin for AIDES (2016), Galerie Un-spaced (2017), Bertrand Grimont Gallery (2017), Espace Arondit (2018), La Forest Divonne Gallery (2018), Chloé Salgado Gallery (2019), Villa Belleville (2019), Laure Roynette Gallery (2019), Chez Valentin Gallery (2021), Gallery Sono (2021) and at the Aah Cité Griset (2021).  Her work has also travelled in Greece at Aegina Museum (2015), in UK at the Guest Project Space in London (2018), in USA at Jefferson Market Library of New York (2018), and in Italy at The Open Box, Milan (2021), Galeria Ipercubo, Milan (2022) and at Lake Como at Galeria Ramo (2022). She has also presented her work in many group shows such as at Centre d'Art Contemporain de Saint-Restitut (2016), at Caillebotte Property in Yerres (2016), at La Maison des Arts de Bages (2019), at Museum of Issy-les-Moulineaux (2017), at CRAC Champigny (2018), at the Center d'Art Contemporain Tignous, in Montreuil (2021). In 2022, Le Grand Café de Saint-Nazaire, Art Center of National Interest, invites her and Marguerite Bornhauser to exhibit the series of sculpture-photographs "Chimera" created in collaboration. In 2021, Léa Dumayet is a finalist in the tenth edition of the "Contemporary Talents" competition of the Francois Schneider Foundation.

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