Exhibition produced by Rencontres d’Arles.
With the collaboration of Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire, Paris, and Galerie Project 2.0, The Hague.
Publication: The Tourist, André Frère Éditions, 2020.
The Tourist contains all the signature elements of Roy’s work that we love and expect: the self-portrait, a cinematic approach, his distinctly colorful palette, as well as a tension between witty playfulness and a sinister atmosphere, convention and the bizarre, elegance and kitsch. We also delight in the way the boundaries between reality and imagination are blurred. But the exceptional quality of La Touriste lies in the meticulous orchestration of the moment when we leave our extensive world to enter his intensive one. Roy creates a visual metaphor of a world we think we know. Yet, through his clever use of juxtaposition, we realize that it is not the world we assume it to be. The details are intricately interwoven, making the scenes both familiar and foreign. A diving mask above a mouth with a cigarette dangling from it, the pool boy’s mop carelessly abandoned near a fake temple; plush slippers too close to the water are never a good idea—nor are high heels on slippery poolside tiles.
The overall effect is like a hammer blow to the cliché of the vacation experience. According to numerous studies, most people prefer the anticipation and memory of their holidays to the actual experience. That is why photographs are so important to them. They erase disappointments and create a pearlescent memory of pleasures that never truly happened. Roy reverses this ritual by taking us to a setting that appears glamorous but is, in reality, much closer to our own lived experience.
