deliquescence of the figures.
Do the appearances taken on by living beings and objects when they die ultimately tell us something about the nature of their substance? Would that still hold true in this series entitled Désolé de Saboter vos Lignes, the result of extracting images from these films, totally without incarnation and webcast on DSL (Digital Subscriber Line)? This series continues the translation of Rondepierre’s cinephile fervour but freeze-frames and their photographic restitution are not made at the same moment in a film’s life cycle.
The Précis de décomposition saved images from obscurity, catching them before their form dissolved and they became iconographic ruins. In contrast, the DSL series freezes or petrifies screening accidents. Today, access to film on the web makes us forget the old spooling of the reel, frame after frame, and the hypnosis induced by the computer screen blanks out the alternation that was part of a film being shown in a theatre: the spectator’s worried, backward glance towards the point of origin of the beam of light,
that mysterious cabin where the fire of images was kindled.[…]
– Graduate of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris, (drawing, printmaking).
– Doctorate in Aesthetics (Thesis on “Les yeux verts” by Marguerite Duras, Paris I University,).
– Aggregation in Visual Arts.
MA thesis on the theatre of S. I. Witkiewicz (Paris 1, 1976), and a DEA in comparative literature on “Written images” (Paris VII University, 1983). His multidisciplinary training and personal tastes have taken him in several directions. As a professional actor he has worked in France and Europe with directors such as Pierre Chabert, Le Théâtre d’En face and Bruno Meyssat, and with choreographers like Mathilde Monnier, Alain Rigout, Grands Magasins, Catherine Diverres and Bernardo Montet. His earlier artistic activities have included making short film, giving performances, and later, doing paintings (1985-90).
In the early 1990s Eric Rondepierre started exploring the blind spots of cinema. His intervention consisted in choosing frames (the images that are projected at a rate of 24 per second on the screen, and that are invisible in a normal screening) in accordance with clearly defined criteria, and then excerpting them and showing them as large-format photographic prints. This economy of the image, which is often defined as “conceptual,” brings into play several different registers (text, painting, cinema, photography) with a rigour that does not exclude strangeness or humour.
With exhibitions in France and abroad becoming increasingly frequent, he started writing fictions around his photographic texts.
In 1996 he was made an associate professor at Université de Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne).
Since 2002 his work has branched out. The artist has begun using his own images, recomposing them in combination with his texts or drawings, or with appropriated images from the cinema. His recent writings have also extended into other fields such as fiction and autobiography.
