Sébastien Arrighi, whose concerns are rather focused on landscape issues in photography, has created with Simile (which is the installation version of the site simile.fr) a tribute to the American photographic tradition around the iconic site of Tonopah (see, among many others, the famous view of Stephen Shore). He used the video game GTA (Grand Theft Auto, known for its violence).
The photographic work, the search for framing, the components of the image, was carried out in the virtual world of this game according to the same conditions as a film photographic approach in the real landscape. The kind of breathing plans, the bulging halo that brings these images to life as if they were seen from the point view of the sphere of the small novel River 75 of Manganelli,their dreamlike and nocturnal curvature, constitute a precise charm with deep within these appearances the horror of clinical fiction, all the sublime dimension of a hyper-real artifact.
Simile is like the introjection in our brain of a myth of America. It’s the freedom put in an aquarium. But inside, there’s a beating heart. This is extremely neo-romantic for the idea of a solitude open to the vastness of the world. Intimacy permeates the digital flesh of this world. It’s also like the sizzling of flies at the time of the cowboy duel. But they’re not here. Absence vibrates in each of the planes. The countless seconds and grains of snow whisper a sensual and anonymous story.
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Paul Emmanuel Odin, excerpt from the presentation text of the exhibition “Une femme a accouché d’une sphère – La Compagnie, lieu de création, Marseille 2017).
Read more about Sebastien Arrighi’s work
Simile
Thevideo (Queen Of The Silver Camps) published in 8 copies – 2 E.A. In your collection it will take the form of a computer file accompanied by certificate, variable support. Playing loops on screen (TV, computer) or projecting in large format.
27 A4-format photographic prints,published in 3 copies and 2 a.p. Pigment ink prints on Canson® Infinity photographic rag 310 g/m. Signed and numbered by the artist. Prices for unframed works.
A publicationlimited to 100 copies.
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Exhibition View, la Compagnie- “Queen of the Silver Camps” Video, 2017
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Living a photographic experience through a video game, as it could have taken place in real life, but “without the hair in the wind”. Grand-Theft-Auto Five, a role-playing and action video game, mimics the American West within an open world.
It gives the opportunity to explore a décor meticulously crafted on the basis of reality but also nourished by a collective memory, that of a mythical Far-West, theatre of all possible.
As a result, the experience inside the Sonora Desert (USA) or rather Senora (GTA-V) appears as a facsimile: not only in the ability of the game to imitate reality, illusory but striking, but above all, in the exploration that simulates the feeling of a Photographer imagine treading this land for the first time.
Sebastien Arrighi
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List of works in the “Simile” series (click on each image to have access to each worksheet).
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Book
Other series of works by Sebastien Arrighi
Works by Sebastien Arrighi recently documented on our website