Nicolas FLOC?H « Diatome?es»
? LMNO
For his rst monographic exhibition at LMNO Nicolas Floc?h (Rennes, 1970) takes us to the aquatic depths.
The artist explores space and questions the productivity of the oceans - these sublime regulators of ecological balance - through photography and sculpture.
Diving into the four corners of the world, the artist seeks to document all the colours that water can take, colours representative of life.
If the recording dimension of the immersed reality is obvious in this kind of shooting, these series show natural underwater landscapes with the astonishing complexity of diversities.
We now know that the colour of the water is determined by the presence and variety of phytoplankton. These microorganisms, most of which are measured in microns, are made up of exoskeletons with varied and striking shapes. By sedimentation over millions of years, their presence in the ocean has contributed to the formation of oil but also to the formation of our famous Belgian blue stone from Hainaut. Thanks to 3D imaging and high-precision modelling carried out by microscanning, he makes signi cant enlargements of these unicellular microalgae in the blue stone. He therefore creates sculptures on a scale that allows us to approach their forms, which confronts us with the representation of unusual temporal and spatial scales.
In 2018, Nicolas Floc?h wrote in issue 2 of Paysageur magazine
in which he gave his impressions of his work:?... The main
habitat, the body of water, is colour. Indeed, the composition of
the marine environment, that is, the sediments, plankton and detritus contained in the water mass, will determine its turbidity, but also its colour. A eld in bloom as the Impressionists may
have represented it, becomes a green, blue or red monochrome underwater. This vision thus brings us back to the history of painting and art, and in particular to the history of the monochrome to immersive installations, from Alphonse Allais, Yves Klein to James Turrell or Ann Veronica Janssens. If we change scale to that of the shapes of coloured plankton, diatoms or radiolarians, we enter
Ernst Haeckel?s plates, the architectures of Buckminster Fuller... The colour of the water is not a limit in the representation of the underwater landscape, it constitutes its complexity, richness and speci city.
Turbidity would be to the underwater landscape what the horizon is to the terrestrial landscape, its escape point, towards the monochrome. The immersive pictorial dimension of the marine environment, the capacity for apparent abstraction o ered by the environment, makes it a complex space for exploration, at di erent scales, of colour and light... »
Nicolas Floc?h explores the question of the colour of water through his collaborations with researchers Hubert Loisel and Fabrice Lizon and the teams at the Wimereux marine station, in the framework of ?sea workers? and two new projects, ?Initium Maris? and ?Watercolor / la couleur de l?eau?, both led by Artconnexion and OAO.
Nicolas Floc?h has been active since the 1990s and has bene ted from exhibitions in many institutions with international visibility. Such was the case in Belgium at the SMAK in the exhibition ?Over the Edges? in 2000 by Jan Hoet or more recently at the Thalie Art Foundation. He has also had solo exhibitions at FRAC Bretagne in Rennes (2017), Mac-Val in (2015) and at Artconnexion (2014). He is currently participating in the famous Setouchi triennial in Japan. He will soon bene t from a monographic exhibition at the FRAC PACA in Marseille. His works are present in about fteen public institutions both in France and abroad and, of course, in many private collections.
Nicolas Floc?h?s relationship with nature, the scientists who observe it and the organizations that seek to preserve it have of course contributed to his inclusion among the artists defended by the gallery, which is celebrating its third anniversary.
Opening on Thursday 5 of September 2019 from 5 to 8 p.m. Exhibition from 6 of September to 19 of October 2019.
Opening hours: Thursday, Friday, Saturday from 2 to 6 p.m., and by appointment.