It is rather hard for anyone not to stop and stare at the quirky photographs by French artist Philippe Ramette, who appears fully dressed in a suit and tie in every picture of his latest exhibition, posing and defying the laws of gravity, as if he possesses super powers or pulling off a magical trick where he sits serenely underwater or walks horizontally on a tall palm tree.
In Balcony 2 , Philippe Ramette reveals that this picture, taken on the wavy sea of Hong Kong Harbour, was the most challenging in the exhibition.
Famed as a sculptor, Ramette began his series of experimental photography during the late '90s, around the same time his name was beginning to emerge in the French contemporary art scene. His exhibition in Bangkok, ''The Upside Down World of Philippe Ramette'', which runs until April 29 at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, is the first time a collection of his pictures are combined together as one in the same exhibition.
During the opening of his exhibition, the 51-year-old artist said he has been an artist all his life, and shared with the local media about his talk-of-the-town conceptual artworks.
Why do you choose to create your art in the form of gravity-defying images?
I would rather not call it ''defying gravity'' but rather ''experimenting'' or ''exploring'' nature. It's my way of discovering and understanding our lives with different points of view, which is, after all, what many artists have in common, in order to create their art pieces.
Irrational Contemplation (2003).
What was the process involved in creating your works for this exhibition?
Before I start working on a photograph, I first visualise what the finished image should look like in my head and draw it, without thinking about whether I will be able to find a fitting location that matches my imaginative creation.
As I travel a lot myself, both for work and leisure, I sometimes discover places that look quite similar to what I imagine. Then, I start to work on a picture _ and this is what's most interesting and challenging about it all. The hardest part is to prepare everything for a shoot. Turning imagination into reality or adding something to make my imagination come true, for me, is miraculous.
When I sketch my idea, I do it all by myself. However, when turning the sketch into a picture, I need help from my team, especially the photographer, who will capture that very moment. I am very happy to work with my photographer, Marc Domage. Besides, he is also a friend of mine. We've been working together for almost 20 years now.
The design process that goes into these photographs feels almost like we are making a movie. And Mark was there as my director. He helps me a lot, especially the pictures of me upside down. They are not computerised. There are tools that help me achieve those difficult positions as well. My other friend, Matthieu, who is a designer, created various structures that helped me stay in different postures in the pictures.
Why do you choose to appear in these pictures and be a director at the same time?
To answer this question I have to recall my early works. At first, as a sculptor, I created different art pieces but I also wanted pictures of them. So I started to take pictures of me wearing a suit and tie together with my finished artworks. Later, I realised that I had quite a few of these pictures, of me with my artworks. I felt that I was so involved with these works and eventually these pictures became my signature. And as I became a character in my works, it allowed me to explore how to use my body and gestures to create art pieces. Recently, I created a dance performance in which I am the choreographer. This is my first work where I focus on using my body as a medium.
Rational Exploration of the Undersea: The Contact (2006).
What do you think this exhibition will convey to the audience?
First of all, I don't want to say how these pictures will speak to them or what hidden messages they will get from the pictures. But I would love the viewers to enjoy the pictures as if they are reading poetry. They will have a chance to admire them beyond their own imagination and let the works speak to them.
One of the pictures in this series, Irrational Laziness [where Ramette was in a room, floating above the ground with his feet touching the edge of the desk, as if he's relaxing in a messy room], there may be no message, but you can still get what I was trying to say. However, what interests most people is how I am able to stay in such positions, or the little details they may or may not be able to figure out.
The key thing for me is that the audience enjoys them and detect a sense of humour in my works. I would love them to spend time and see how these pictures respond to their experiences, or perhaps imagine if they are themselves the character in these pictures.
Some of the pictures were taken underwater. Can you share the process of working on this particular series?
I am very lucky to be friends with two scuba-divers who, I found out later, are very famous divers in France. I told them about my underwater projects and they helped me design the pictures for my underwater series. They also created a metal belt that kept me in position and still in the water. Looking back, it was quite dangerous, but the most important thing is I trusted my team. What you can't see in these pictures is my team, who were carrying an oxygen tank nearby. And once the picture was shot, they quickly came to me with oxygen.
There was one time I was underwater and saw a beautiful fish. I pointed at the fish so my friends could see it, too. Unfortunately, they misunderstood the signal and thought I wanted them to move to where my finger was pointing to.
Irrational Walk (2003).
One of the most outstanding pictures in the series is the one of you standing in mid-air in front of a chateaux with a rope tied to your waist, as if you're a balloon that might float away. How did you achieve that?
I must admit, this is the only picture where I got a little help from a computer program.
I was attached to a balloon filled with helium and the photographer had to wait until I floated at the perfect height before capturing the shot. Then we retouched the image of the balloon.
Now that you've had a chance to see all of your works at once, how do you feel about it? Are you satisfied?
Like many artists, I am never fully satisfied with my works. Although, I do understand that it is rather hard to make the picture look exactly like what I imagined _ but I try my best. And if they don't come out right or satisfy me, I destroy them. I never keep them.
