Since 1976, French artist Jean-Luc Mylayne has led a
nomadic life, travelling for weeks and months on end in
search of his photographic subjects - ordinary,
commonplace birds such as robins and sparrows,
kingfishers and starlings.
Mylayne's work bears little relation to the images of
wildlife photographers, although he has, by necessity,
a deep knowledge of ornithology. He does not pursue
his prey with a telephoto lens, and is not searching for
the exotic or the unusual. He has produced fewer than
150 photographs - each unique - during his life. This is
unsurprising given that every image, although recorded
in a split second, in fact embodies months, sometimes
years of patient work, watching and waiting. Artist and
bird have to be perfectly and intimately acquainted
before the portrait can be captured.
Mylayne describes the bird as the 'actor' to his
'director'. And like a film director, every aspect of the
scene has been carefully conceived beforehand in his
mind - the quality of light (often artificial), the time of
day, the season, the composition of the landscape
elements - leaving only the bird's presence to complete
the picture. As the bird flies into the frame to assume
its designated position, the shutter clicks, and the
photograph, perhaps a year after conception, is finally
finished.
The intense proximity of Mylayne to his subject is clear
when, in some photographs, you catch his image
reflected back in the bird's eye. At other times, the bird
is partially obscured by foliage, caught in mid-flight, or
tiny within the frame, so that you struggle to find it
hidden within its natural habitat.
At heart, Jean-Luc Mylayne's art is a conceptual
project which addresses the philosophical and
experiential phenomenon of time. For Mylayne,
humanity has a special sensitivity to time, which
distinguishes us from the animal world, summoned in
his use of the word kairiciform derived from the Greek
'kairos'. Time is of course also central to photography.
And Jean-Luc Mylayne's photography is unique in the
richness of its temporal range in that the drama of the
instant arises from an intense and protracted
absorption in the details of the natural world.
Kate Bush
Senior Programmer
This is the first exhibition by Jean-Luc Mylayne in the
United Kingdom and includes a selection of work from
the last twenty years.
Jean-Luc Mylayne was born in Amiens in 1946. He has
had major solo exhibitions at Barbara Gladstone
Gallery, New York, Museé d'Art Moderne de la Ville de
Paris and the Museé d'Art Moderne, Saint-Étienne and
has been included in important group exhibitions such
as Zeichen und Wunder at the Kunsthaus Zurich, and
Terra Incognita at the Neues Museum Weserburg,
Bremen.
Supported by:
-Association Francaise d'Action Artistique- Ministère
des Affaires Étrangères
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