Etoile Rétine

2020

The One, ashes in her energy drink can, eyes fixed on the Other’s wrist. They had mingled the flight of sparrows with the warmth of cicadas on Doppler, as their irises changed to globes of ivory. Points undulate in an invisible incubator. Shadows shy away from surfaces, exposing vivid memory, which burns beneath the same star that witnessed its birth. The Other puts her hand out the window. The metal burns her palm, but, focusing on the feel of the wind, she is able to rest it on the chassis of the car, gradually growing accustomed to the conflicting sensations. Assa, with her pearly muzzle, had abandoned herself to dreams of holidays, confined by her prophetic palindrome. Her name inevitably evokes her feline face. Each summer, she traverses a scorching split, engraved in the lava of a second, one during which the arm of Orion stretches forth, imperceptibly. The hand on the steering wheel detaches itself, gently landing on the nape of the Other’s neck, at the hairline, its thumb caressing the carotid, sensing the pumping of her heart mingling with the throb of the engine. Virgule no longer followed the caprices of signs. She had moved on, updated her software. Her tactile furrows were darkened by an infinite number of magnetic hieroglyphs. She caressed the skin of virtual parchments, a carnal Braille of sarcophagic images. The tips of her fingers had become the arbiters of a capacitative reality. She believed in what she touched. The sonorous space inside the car becomes saturated by the wind, the various spectra brimming like so many colour slides. They had not spoken for a long time, drinking in the intoxicating regular heartbeat thudding in their ears. The car decelerates, a sign reads “Etoile Retine”.
Flavien Berger, 2021 for the book Marguerite Bornhauser - Percevoir, Ed. Lamartinière

March 2020. This quarantine journal explores my confinement in Paris, reinventing every day objects, giving them a pictorial sense and an often abstract appearance in both spontaneous scenes and carefully constructed compositions. Immersed in my closed apartment the images are intimate, tightly framed with raw light using mostly natural window light that bounced off the walls, on to the wooden floor before finally fading away. Going over and over intimate everyday life meant I saw it differently, these images transform daily life into a strange world of contrasts; a strainer is used as a light filter to sculpt a face and plants become a sensual material casting shadows and hints of colours that create an original world.