Patrick Tosani

Born in 1954 in Boissy-l'Aillerie (FR)
Lives and works in Paris (FR)

Valse

1983
Colour photograph, cibachrome
170 x 120 cm
Year of Purchase: 1985

Patrick Tosani veered towards photography after studying architecture. This possibly explains his particular interest in the issues of space and scale which hallmark his work. As a virtuoso in his chosen medium, he produces noteworthy series, both for the size of the prints in them and for the quality of the imagination they contain. For what is most of the time involved is the poetic manipulation and combination of simple objects: figurines, clothes, parts of the body, various liquids… ‘As if the photograph were replacing reality’, in his own words.
Valse (Waltz) is striking first and foremost for the joyful ‘pictoriality’ of a composition that governs the surface of a large format picture. On an intense vermilion red ground, the enlargement of two ice cubes, one on top of the other, produces an impression of monumentality. The effigy of a pair of dancers, caught in the luminescent mass of the cubes, is partly protruding. The gleaming, varnished look of the frosty transparency emphasizes the tangy quality of the colours (the yellow dress and blue suit of the waltzing couple…). But the subject of the work is not merely visual, it is also a mind-game with time. Just as the plastic in which the figures are cast permanently freezes a movement, so, at the same time as it freezes it, does the photograph underscore the dynamic momentum of a presentation of objects; it transfixes and sets up the fleeting moment of thawing ice. The captive figures remain, balanced, in the illusory promise of imminent liberation.

^{Olivier Goetz}