muriel bordier’s digital collages depict surreal + satirical swimming lessons
all images courtesy of muriel bordier

 

 

 

photographer and video artist muriel bordier approaches the subjects of her digital photographic collages with a healthy dose of wit. her compositions offer an amusing look at the everyday world around us, imagining landscapes that could only exist in a funny, fictional reality. for the series ‘les thermes’ (the spas), bordier chooses swimming lessons as the theme, and toys with the viewer’s perception of possibility — bathers are led to an indoor pool on chair lift-like contraptions; figures line up to jump off a diving board; a single worker fills an enormous empty abyss.

 

‘in my photographs, I try to cast an amused and satirical eye on the world,’ bordier says.I choose elements that are part of our collective memory, our society’s cultural codes, objects, monuments, landscapes, people. I juxtapose, stage and photograph these elements, playing on the difference the image generates and the spectator’s representation. there is no master plan, I don’t tell the spectator what to think; I simply provide an elaborate composition that allows the eye to travel, create its own hierarchy of aspects, and awaken perception.’

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