Appeal to Shovels and Pickaxes
by Nicolas Villodre
by Nicolas Villodre
Previously published on 17 June 2010 on www.paris-art.com
Julie Navarro has exhibited part of her photographic work in the first edition of the event called
“La Pelle et la pioche du 18 juin” (18th June Appeal to Shovels and Pickaxes) at the Chaudronneries (industrial boilers) in Montreuil which have been transformed into spaces for cultural events by Richard Choukroun.
Lyonel Kouro, G.G. Lefève and Jh. Meunier had invited a number of artists to hang their photographs (Marion Dalas, Pierre Montagnez, Anthony Valon, Julie Navarro) or their paintings, to use the huge warehouse spaces for their sculptures, or project their videos on a large screen attached to the wall by the bar (including a homage paid to Maurice Cullaz by Jean-Henri Meunier).
At nightfall, concerts were programmed by producer «multikulti» Martin Meissonnier (Dada Roots, Nif, V-maxx... Ray Lema). Julie Navarro is simultaneously a painter, photographer and in charge of culture at the town hall of the 19th arrondissement of Paris. She has had several solo exhibitions of paintings. The photographs she takes have affinities with her paintings.
Not only do the works connect in terms of themes (for instance, old ladies), in their genre (landscapes), but also in terms of the outlook on the world: she is near and far from her object and remains somehow at close proximity. Forest landscapes are sometimes unequivocally blurred. They could be coined as post-romantic. It seems in fact that Julie Navarro's vision is tinted with her very own melancholy. The tones seem faded. The red puncta on a greenish background that were already present in some of her earlier collages, like the one she called Un tout petit cheval (A really smal horse), recall Miguel Egaña's land art (particularly the metallic “saw-leaves”, painted bright red, which he installed in the park of the Château de Chamarande). Yet in these small format colour photographs, the small red disks are not in situ, lost in nature, but the result of precise minimalist graphic interventions (hypergraphic, as the Lettrists would say), in a tradition probably inaugurated by Man Ray (Ingres's Violin, 1924). These eyelets jar, clash or shock the eye of the spectator.
They confer an anthropomorphic, or rather zoomorphic, character, to the topographic phenomena that Navarro has decided to privilege, by framing them or isolating them via the camera lens: the shape of a branch recalls the head of an animal, aligned red eyes seem to belong to owls, the red dot on a formless mound could be a fox on the prowl. Here landscape is purely mental and the photograph is pictorial. The photographic diptych, which is hung distinctly above these country scenes or series of vedute, takes as its starting point the portrait of an old lady with a stern face, in sombre clothing, found in an attic and preserved from oblivion thanks to digitisation. Is it to insist upon the “feminine” aspect of needlework? Julie Navarro has knotted several strands of brightly coloured wool on the top of the character's head, giving the lady a mohawk hairstyle that makes her look... punk. These two photographs are bizarre, enigmatic. No obvious stitching.