Author | Lisa Markuson
“This endurance piece, The Artist Is Waiting, will bring to life a whole new malleable element…”
I’m a very nostalgic person. Sometimes I feel like a look at the world through a soft misted lens that makes my environment look vastly different to me than it does to any other human eye. Perhaps I am alone in a field of vision filled with ghosts, gossamer, and glints.
Immersing myself in the photos of Florence Montmare, I know that is not true; maybe that wistful gaze is shared by us all.
In a single long exposure, over many hours of troubled sleep, Montmare fills your eye with the hope, despair, reflection, questions, and finally acceptance of change. A view from the foot of her bed, the most intimate place you can find yourself, suddenly becomes the universal, the archetypal. We’ve all been at the foot of our own beds, looking up at a past we regret, a future out of focus.
That’s what is really compelling to me about this series. Somehow, by showing us dreamlike interpretations of her past, I feel almost like I’m able to witness the fine point where history, premonition, and existence in the constantly evolving present intersect. A quiet, thoughtful, reverent moment. I cherish that moment.
On September 18th Montmare’s Illuminations exhibition will make its world premiere at Ivy Brown Gallery. According to the press release, “Illuminations is a multidisciplinary exhibition that engages the audience through photographs, text, and site-specific installation using open narratives that allow the viewers to have their own interpretations. Illuminations is the culmination of over ten years of work, experimentation, and process on the part of the artist.”
This exchange, these interpretations, and that ephemeral nature captured in one image, is also how I relate to writing haiku for strangers, so I’ve asked The Haiku Guys to join us at the opening reception to write free poems for attendees at Ivy Brown Gallery. Montmare herself kept a lucid diary and wrote poetry during the time that she was taking these photographs. Excerpts of her writings are included in the exhibition; internal documentation reflecting the external.
The experiment doesn’t end in the past though – on October 12th Montmare will install herself on an antique wooden bed in the exhibition, waiting from 12pm to 12am, in hopes that her former lover will return to visit her. This endurance piece, The Artist Is Waiting, will bring to life a whole new malleable element, a new reason to watch with bated breath, another tenuous thread connecting the past and the future, and seconds tick by.
Illuminations is being funded in part by an Indiegogo pre-sale of some of the most compelling works of the series, there is still time in the online pre-sale to purchase prints, learn more about the project, and watch a video made by Ms. Montmare and her collaborators.
The opening reception is Thursday September 18th 6-9pm (exhibition from 9/18 – 10/18) at Ivy Brown Gallery: 675 Hudson Street, 4th floor.
The Artist Is Waiting will take place on October 12th 12pm-12am, waiting for her long lost love to make the final photograph.
Tell your friends to check it out: Tweet @florencemontmare #illuminationsnyc
