"I have always looked in art for another vision of the world. A deeper vision but also more beautiful, more sensitive. Between dream, abstraction and symbolism, my photographs are a quest for this "other real". In the suspended time, in the reflections and the unnoticed details, they are an invitation to change their eyes, to grasp the elusive. Drawn on an art paper, textured and 100% cotton, their pictorial beauty expresses itself fully. The light, the colors, the forms, the movement which cross them speak above all to the sensibility. " 

Raphael Paya.

Exhibition view
Showroom of the auction house

The Saint-Aubin auction house has had the pleasure of exhibiting the creations of a contemporary artist trained in photography, from 9 to 16 May 2017. Thirty of his "pictorial photographs" as he characterizes them have been exhibited continuously and free admission in the showroom of the auction house, 3 boulevard Michelet, in Toulouse.

Native of the Hautes-Pyrénées, Raphaël PAYA creates his works armed with a single camera. He photographs natural elements, the watercourse being his favorite subject, using the play of light and the movement of the element itself to transform this "capture of the real" into a veritable work of art, after having considerably enlarged a portion of the image taken. The natural figurative element becomes abstract and terribly aesthetic. 

The game of water in motion, matter sculpted by the light give a amazing result, halfway between abstraction and symbolism, whereas it is originally "only" photography. His creations are multi-faceted, at the same time photography, abstract composition or dreamlike painting.

We chose to present the work of Raphaël PAYA after seeing some of his works, and remained banned when it came to defining the material used. With his photographs, the real becomes if "Pictorial" that we look at them meticulously and examine them with concentration, paying attention to every detail to try to recognize an element related to the image and the idea that we usually have of a river or a corner of rocks. At every glance, we can not help but doubt by asking if his subjects are really taken from nature, the real one, the one we know or that we think we know ...

Drawn on art paper ("Canson Arches Watercolor Rag") laminated on Dibond, the frame in an American box in black anodized lacquered aluminum gives these photographs a sober, elegant and resolutely modern presentation.

 

To know more :

raphaëlpaya@sfr.fr

raphaelpayaphotosdart.blogspot.fr