"Imagination is a quasi-divine faculty which first perceives, outside of philosophical methods, the intimate and secret relationships of things, correspondences and analogies."
Charles Baudelaire, Notes nouvelles sur Edgar Poe

As part of the 6th edition of the Photo Saint-Germain festival, two gallery owners - Olivier Lorquin (Galerie Dina Vierny) and Benoît Sapiro (Galerie Le Minotaure) - are presenting a joint exhibition of a selection of twenty diptychs by photographer Frank Horvat.

Horvat's diptychs recall the modern metamorphosis - caused by photography - that has imposed new relationships between works of art and viewers, space and other artefacts. Through framing, the standardisation of objects and spaces to one format, two dimensions and a specific range of colours, and their removal from their original context, photography has liberated them, given them autonomy and the possibility of acquiring new meanings, of signifying something else or something more. It has also made possible the juxtaposition of objects (and situations) from different eras and cultures that previously could not meet. André Malraux explained this phenomenon in his concept of the Musée imaginaire, and put it into practice in his trilogy Métamorphose des dieux.

The diptychs are thus confrontations of metamorphosed or reincarnated images, part of Horvat's imagination where they can infinitely create new links, tell new stories, always different. They liberate and highlight the off-screen, what we can't see on the surface of the image, what in the text remains hidden between the lines. The off-screen has always been important," Horvat explained in one of his interviews, "it allows us to imagine what is not represented. The only thing that sparks the imagination is what is not shown, what is outside the frame.
Such a process defends the images against the 'petrification' of meaning they carry; it protects their existence by opening up the frame to new interpretations. The diptychs, like the imaginary museum (as opposed to the classical museum), are a meeting place, the fruit of a passion. This way of assembling images reflects a particular way of looking at and living in the world. It is like a practical memory that struggles with dispersion, uniting the familiar and the common, according to its own (and secret) rules.

Frank Horvat created 365 diptychs, from which the two gallerists chose twenty that best reflected their own sensibilities and interests. Once the choice was made, it seemed self-evident. The exhibition focuses on compositions that emphasise Horvat's human, rather than intellectual, gaze; his ability to capture gestures and glances that respond to each other despite the time and space that separate them. Most of these diptychs are in black and white, a characteristic that brings them closer to the techniques of the 1920s-30s (Benoit Sapiro's speciality) but also makes the break between the two photographs blurrier, giving the viewer the impression of vertigo. Two become one.

HORVATYEAR
2018 will be my ninetieth birthday. To celebrate, I have prepared a series of 365 diptychs: as many as the days of the year.
These diptychs are juxtapositions of two photos, brought together by a certain analogy of composition, colour and atmosphere, but not necessarily by their subject, time or place. Recently, I've realised that some diptychs can mean something different (or something more) than just images placed side by side. I've digitised a few thousand photos, including some I took when I was fourteen with my first camera: all the ones I didn't destroy or lose - deliberately or through carelessness - and to which, at some point, I found a value. I chose a few hundred that I imagined someone would want to see on their walls. This excludes painful or shocking situations, so inevitably some of my favourites. The crucial step was to combine them. By pairing, a photo can become stronger - or weaker, as in life. Each one tells its own story, about the fragment of reality it represents. But in some cases, pairing can reveal aspects that are less apparent at first glance, just as certain objects seem to change when viewed from different angles.The arrangement of the diptychs taught me a lesson, not only about my photography, but also about the mechanism of my mental associations of images, memories and emotions. Like footprints that, at this point in my life, I want to leave behind.

Frank Horvat, May 2017