Pink Geisha. Toy Stories

Description

Etienne Clément’s TOY STORIES ONE photographs, set in vacant, dilapidated buildings, fasten their gaze on tangible but unexpected presences. Reversing the conventional studio portrait format of placing the real-life subject against an idealized, fake background such as painted clouds or a rural idyll, Clément has used all-too-real, troubled environments, as the backdrop for a series of very unconventional, mass produced figures. The effect is darkly comic and, occasionally, disturbing. The subjects are tiny, secondhand toy figures, each of which must once have represented some kind of ideal for its young owner but have since gone astray. Close up, their flaws are revealed, in the approximation of their painted features and plastic physiologies. They look like products of their neglected environment, emerging from darkened doorways like a travelling troupe of forgotten film characters, each apparently making a new bid for stardom. Whether seen just as toys with a story to tell or as something less innocent, Clément’s subjects take photographic portraiture into a bizarre new sphere.