PHOTO:Pascal Blondeau
A renowned photographer Pascal Blondeau, was born in Paris and grew up in the Saint-Germain des Prés on the Left Bank. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, then at the competitive music school of Alice Dona and worked as a photographer for 20 year in Paris, but really hit his stride since his move to New York in 2009 where he is obsessed with his creative passion.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: IAMY Archive
Pascal Blondeau’s work focuses on identity and the double “I” that exists in all human beings, a theme he finds especially fascinating. He is constantly seeking an aesthetic and beauty beyond perfection, a quest that often leads us to become lost in the search for a forever unobtainable Absolute. This Summer the artist presented two bodies of works at the Historical Archives Museum Hydra (IAMY), “Oui, Je crois” (8/7-4/8/19) focusing on backs,portraits not only of people but also from dolls, and mixing them to obtain a mixture of true and false, based in the idea that the present is already the future. As the artist says “My models are here, without being here and already gazing into the Future”. His new body of work “Swimming Pool, Tribute to David Hockney” (2015), on view now, was created when Blondeau was in a vacation at a friend’s house in Shelter Island built by his two friends, the well-known architects Peter Stamberg and Paul Aferiat. The house is built with psychedelic colors and very original materials. Then he thought of the famous series of photos of boys in pools taken in California in the ‘70s and the idea came to him to put himself on stage in the same way. “I found myself in the pool where everything, according to the hours of the day, the light, the colorful walls of the house were reflected in the water and I had the sensation of a single stroke to swim in a painter’s palette, which reminded me of the paintings of David Hockney. I came out quickly, grabbed my camera and started taking a series of shots. The following year, I rented this house again to finish my series”. Blondeau says. In each large, colorful photo, Blondeau announces himself to the world. In one photo, he’s standing on the edge of a swimming pool looking down at himself in the water. The subject, he says, is his own narcissism. From 1986 to 1988, Pascal Blondeau studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and then went on to study photography at the Ecole Américaine, also in Paris. In 1989, the singer Alice Dona opened a music school in Paris, where he was accepted as a student after many auditions. He stayed there for six years to sing, dance, do comedy and study scenography (performance design). In 1999, Pascal Blondeau became a scenographer at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris. After he photographed details of his work, a curator at Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje, North Macedonia organized a solo exhibition of his work in 2000. He moved to New York City in 2009 and met fashion designer Vera Wang and Ultra Violet, the superstar of Andy Warhol’s Factory. In 2011, Blondeau and Ultra Violet collaborated on the exhibition “9/11 OH MY GOD” held at The Invisible Dog in Brooklyn. In July 2009, his series “Deneuve and Lady Swing” was performed in Bangkok, where he also had a hugely successful exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The series was a long process of transformation of the Thai actor-artist Michael Shaowanashai.
Info: Historical Archives Museum Hydra, Hydra, Duration: 4-30/8/19, Days & Hours: Days & Hours: Daily 9:00-26:00 & 19:30-21:30, www.iamy.gr
