Emmanuel Monzon

Press Release Gallery Charbon:  ART FAIR ASIA 2018

The work of Emmanuel Monzon focuses primarily on the idea of urban sprawling and the expansion of its periphery. Monzon photographs banality as though it were a Romantic painting, trying only to be “stronger than this big nothing” in controlling the space by framing the subject. His aesthetic of the banal obeys its own rules : a ban on living objects , a precise geometrical organization , and the revelation of a specific physical and mental landscape blurring the lines between city and suburb, between suburb and countryside, a process that results in an independent identity. Monzon thematically consistent work highlights things that make their surroundings appear quite empty and soulless. An unnerving set of social observations. Yet the tenderness of his colouring softens the quite harsh social comment his images tend to deliver. There is an absolute stillness in the images : nothing moves, not even time. Monzon grasps what is simple, and that is difficult.
Emptiness, absence, lack of a meaningful world : subjects are not inherently expressive yet they convey a deep sense of grief over the loss of meaning. Time has come to a stop. The absence of shadows and the pinkish grey mist often give a strong and disturbing impression of dream. Does these places really exist ? The reflection redeems and heals the wounds a mindless world inflicts on reality, and transforms an unstructured and empty present into a bearable memory.

Publication: Featureshoot Magazine: A Photographic Duet of Flesh & Spirit, Earth & Animal

...In the photographs of Antoine D’Agata, the very fabric of the flesh becomes a radiant field of energy, at once murky and diaphanous as though we might dissolve and disintegrate into our spiritual essence for a taste of eternity. In D’agata, we feel an insistent intensity, the impassioned whisper of a wordless truth that knows that pain and pleasure exist like the ouroburo, a snake eating its tail.

In counterpoint is the work of Emmanuel Monzon, which takes us to the very edges of urban sprawl. Here solidity reigns supreme, as “progress” eats its way into the landscape, ignoring the perils of climate change. In Monzon’s work, the see the last moments of the natural landscape, before the earth as it stood for millions of years is desecrated by our limitless desire for expansion. Monzon captures the banality of it all, the essential ugliness of the unstoppable development of the earth.

The soft, beige light of Monzon’s work reads like a sedative, a seductive little pill that lulls us into a false sense of entitlement as it alienates us from our true selves. Here, in this perfectly plastic world of picture perfect harmony, D’agata’s photographs acquire a new layer of depth as we consider his choice of subjects — people who could not go along with illusions we assert in the name of “normalcy.”...

 Exhibition: ENTER THE VOID- Gallery Charbon Art Space- HK

"Trained as a painter,Emmanuel Monzon is mindful of the grey texture of his photographs. His empty landscapes reflect his attachment to forms and colours, giving them space to beheard. To me, the series exhibited at Charbon art Space echoes both the human loneliness and the power of things against a lost American backdrop. This shadow looks like a calm rain of grey while one can hear the rustling leaves of the tree…"

Caroline Ha Thuc

Specialized in Asian contemporary art, she contributes to different magazines such as ArtPress in France and Pipeline/Am Post in Hong Kong.