"Antoine d’Agata tells us a troubling and murky story"
ATLAS gathers all the recent works of Antoine d’Agata. This exhibition is the fruit of a cinematographic and artistic project started in 2013 with the release of the movie entitled ATLAS. White noise, an installation conceived after the movie is currently on show at LaBanque as part of the exhibition entitled Dépenses (curated by Lea Bismuth).From this project, Antoine d’Agata published a book of the same name to be released next October by Editions Textuel. The series featured at the gallery is his last one entitled “Paradigmes”. It reveals a new formal approach at the crossroad between photographic and cinematographic practice.
Before anything, ATLAS is a journey. It is the recording of the obsessions and sensitive experiences of the artist. Going from one continent to another, Antoine d’Agata tells us a troubling and murky story about prostitutes he met and places he visited. His nights left him with bits and pieces of “dark realities” and the “destructive satisfaction of desire”.
“Inside the different chronologies and accumulations that constitute Atlas and Paradigmes, certainty collapses and reality dissolves into fragmented sequences of life. The dark and hidden face of the world appeals to me, the cursed or taboo side of it. Under the conscious influence of sexual disorders and narcotics, I compromise myself both physically and mentally. Addiction to chemical substances is key to my capacity to constantly reinvent my own destiny through photography, the way I look at the world as well as my actions.”
