Thibault Hazelzet has, for a long time, been identified as a photographer. However, his work never seemed to record the world as it appears. His images’ only subjects are paper models, paintings, drawings he created that he then arranges and modifies in the studio during the photo shoot in order to make them less identifiable but mostly very pictorial. He then gets rid of all the various stages as if he only wanted the ghost or rather the skin of his process to remain.
It is only recently, after he sculpted little plaster figurines for the needs of a new photographic series entitled Les Aveugles (The blind) that he decided to keep « the skin, flesh and bone » of the matter : by confronting the plasters’ physical presence to the dematerialization of their image. Since then, sculptures and paintings have become as essential as photography in his practice.
Between figuration and abstraction, expressionism and minimalism, primitive and contemporary art, Thibault Hazelzet’s enigmatic constructions border on wild power and pagan spirituality.