Delphine Burtin

Encouble

29/04/2016

11/06/2016

Gallery FIFTY ONE

Opening reception: Thursday, Apr. 28th 2016 from 2 – 6 pm,
in the presence of the artist!

Gallery FIFTY ONE is pleased to announce the first solo show by the Swiss photographer Delphine Burtin (1974), called “Encouble”. The title is a typical Swiss-French word meaning “to stumble or to trip on” and gives away the leitmotiv of the artist: a visual play of (re-)arranging daily used objects in still life compositions, in such a way that they undermine the spectator’s perception of reality completely. Her work balances between fact and fiction.

Read the full press release here.

Delphine Burtin

After studying graphic design, Delphine Burtin worked as a designer for several years, both for advertising agencies and freelance. In 2011, she followed an advanced training in photography at the Vevey School of Applied Arts (CEPV- Centre d’Enseignement Professionnel de Vevey).

Her work questions the notions of illusion, of the disappearance through still lifes or visual puzzles playing with the ambiguity of perception.

The series Disparition (2012) originated by photographing the waste the artist made in one week. The idea of exposing things we no longer want to see, is linked in her work with the Vanitas idea of 17th and 18th Century paintings. By playing with palpability and repeatedly questioning the senses of the viewer, Delphine Burtin abstracts reality in order to question it better.

Her series Sans Condition Initiale was part of the exhibition ReGeneration3 – Quelles perspectives pour la photographie?, an international project dedicated to the emerging photographic scene presented by the Musée de L’Elysée of Lausanne (Suisse) in 2015.

Encouble*

Encouble*, Burtin’s graduation series from 2013, interrogates the senses of the viewer. Can we trust what we see? By recombining photographs of simple everyday objects, she creates new installations which she photographs again. This series had an immediate and wide success: in 2013 it was shortlisted for the Paris Photo Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards (in the First PhotoBook category), it won the 1st Prize during the exhibition Selection at Photoforum PasquArt, and was laureate of the Prix HSBC 2014. The series has already been shown in Berlin, Paris, Strasbourg (Festival Oblick), Montpellier and different cities in France, Belgium as well as in New York.

*Encouble n.f. [Swiss] something that embarrasses, that is unwelcome, that interferes or embarrasses. S’encoubler v. to stumble, to trip up, to strike one’s foot against something when walking or running so that one staggers or falls.

Her series La dimension cachée, was exhibited at the Photoforum Pasquart in Bienne (CH) in 2016.