Dolby Chadwick Gallery is thrilled to announce Abodes, an exhibition of recent work by French photographer Éric Antoine, on view for the month of April.
The show’s titular series Abodes speaks to how inextricably linked Antoine’s work is to his home and memories. Different configurations of numbered boxes represent the artist’s past residences, which begin and end in the secluded forest of France’s Alsace region. Within the expansive wooded landscape, Antoine developed his intense fascination for trees, documenting their lives through his anthropomorphic “tree portraits.” Continuously returning to the same arboreal sitters, Antoine’s images illustrate the passage of time.
Much attention has been brought to Antoine’s use of the archaic wet collodion process, one of the earliest forms of photography. However, his images are far from nostalgic: “I don't use the medium because it's something old. I use it because it's the sharpest, most organic material process. What’s important to me is the deep black and shimmering silver.” Moreover, the fluidic medium affords Antoine the ability to render his more abstracted works in the same manner as his paintings. For the Shore series, the artist deftly manipulates the flowing emulsion to create abrasions that give dimension and movement to the water within these somber vignettes.
Image: Abodes III, 2023 | Ambrotype © Éric Antoine
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