Iseult Labote
Urban Landscapes - Serie Bouquet N° I
2001

About the Item

Born 1959, Geneva, Switzerland Vanna Karamaounas aka Iseult Labote – Lives and works in Geneva and Berlin. Born in Geneva of mixed Greek and Swiss heritage, Labote studied art history and political science at the University of Geneva. Her passion for photography, which burgeoned during her teenage years, led her to take several study trips abroad including Athens, Rome, Paris, Moscow, Bangkok, Singapore, New York, Cuba and Tokyo. Her work is represented in private collections in Switzerland, the USA, France, Italy, Luxembourg and Greece. Numerous public institutions have collected her photography, including the Fonds Cantonal d’Art Contemporain de l’Etat de Genève (FCAC), the Geneva student residency, the MAMCO (Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Genève), Darier Private Bank, the State Museum of Contemporary Art K M S T – S M C A in Thessaloniki, The Costopoulos Foundation and the National Bank of Greece. __ The same work of anonymous people is revealed in the series Bouquet, created throughout the construction of Athens’ subway. A vegetal metaphor, the title of these photographs of steel pipes, whose sections are all coloured in a bright red, is an invitation to see these objects as a bunch of red roses laid before the photographer’s eyes. It is therefore a gift of chance, which transforms, by an interpretation in abyss, the images themselves into gifts, as a claimed operation of seduction. The repetition of these pipes recalls the Minimalism’s duplication of forms, as well as the industrial material and red colour, which were highly favoured by Donald Judd, "the sole colour to really render a precise object". But this profusion also evokes the industrial sites which hold millions of presents, if you want to see them. Here, the site offers an almost ready to take away bunch. Extract from the text by Vanessa Morisset, Art Critic and Philosopher at Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

Creator:

Iseult Labote (1959, Greek, Swiss)

Creation Year:

2001

Dimensions:

Height: 31.5 in (80 cm)Width: 47.25 in (120 cm)

Medium:

C Print,Digital

Movement & Style:

Abstract

Period:

2010-