The work of Johanna Reich is one of those which invites us to think about our relationship to memory and history in the digital age.
More specifically, with RESURFACE, a project she has been working on for several years, Johanna Reich puts the spotlight on women artists of the 19th and 20th centuries and the odd paradox that the majority of them, despite the recognition they received during their lifetime, both from their peers and the public, have mysteriously disappeared from today’s collective memory and from a certain Official History of Art. Using multiple archival sources, Johanna Reich uncovered over 400 women artists of every nationality who, during their lifetime, had a major influence on their contemporaries. Johanna Reich took advantage of the resources available on the internet by digitalizing the portraits, biographies and works of many of them. The progressive presence of these women artists on the internet outlines a completely different landscape of artistic creation in the 19th and 20th centuries than the one being taught and transmitted for decades.
In the exhibition RESURFACE I & II, through photography and video, Johanna Reich subtly plays on several registers, analogue and digital, physical and digital, like these large format prints of portraits of women artists derived from Polaroïds which have been scanned in their first stage of development, that precise moment when the contours become barely perceptible, between presence and absence.
With the support and participation of LAccolade.
In partnership with PRISKA PASQUER Gallery.
L’Agence à Paris
Founded in 2013 by Lucie Touya and Christopher Yggdre, L’Agence à Paris represents artists, essentially in the visual arts field, of every nationality, by guiding them throughout all aspects of creation. L’Agence develops a singular and flexible model which offers a possible answer to the rapid mutations of the economics of creation. It develops a reflection and action with the desire to create healthy relationships with the art market. One of its editorial specifications is to bring together isolated artistic and creative regions which fully participate in the elaboration of innovative imagination.