Marina GADONNEIX

Inspired by the experiments of the Norwegian physicist Kristian Birkeland who reproduced the polar lights in a laboratory in the early 20th century, Marina Gadonneix has been conducting a long-term research project in various laboratories throughout France and the United States since 2013.

 

Though all made in the confines of scientific laboratories, it is the physical world that Marina Gadonneix is interested in in the series Phenomena. Inspired by the experiments of Kristan Birkeland who reproduced the polar lights in the early 2=th century. The laboratories she works in are spaces of representation, modeling and conceptualization of physical phenomena such as avalanches, lightning, meteorites, aurora borealis, etc. It is in these highly controlled environments, and the devices and constructions creating and contorting these natural phenomenon, that Marina Gadonneix concentrates her research into the physicality and the wonder of these natural phenomenons. 

 

Her large scale photographs merge the traditions and aesthetics of landscape photography and the scientific document. It seems appropriate that Marina Gadonneix uses photography, a medium at the intersection of reality and fiction, to address this paradox of representing reality; of simultaneously measuring and controlling what we see in the real world.

"Phenomena studies the question of devices for making scientific experiments, constructions that enable us to apprehend the world from the smallest to largest scale. Thus there is a representation of reality behind every machine that questions both the profound nature of things and our capacity to understand them." (Marina Gadonneix).

 

»Marina Gadonneix's photographs reveal the existence of an unfathomable mystery, our perseverance in wanting to decipher it and the photograph, as proof of the natural, irrepressible inclination of the operator of the image to its receiver, for ecstasy, which will always make him prefer the question to the answer.« (Raphaelle Stopin).

 

Marina Gadonneix, born in 1977 in Paris, lives and works in Paris (FR)

Graduated in 2002, École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie, Arles (FR).

Professor at the National School of Art and Design, Nancy (FR)

Exhibitions in International museums and galleries worldwide.

Most recently in Centre Pompidou, Paris.