UNO+UNO via ausonio 18 Milan Italie
The power of Noemie Goudal’s work (Paris, 1984) lies in her ability to recreate a narrative where an infinite number of stories, all of which equally plausible, can unfold themselves. Her photographs condense the time narrative, which is typical of the story, into stratified visual representations constructed on different levels, both temporal and spatial.
As her first Italian exhibition, ‘Les Amants’ refers to the traces that are left on the ground after the passage of overwhelming, passional, and at times destructive forces. Thus the images offer, or rather reconstruct, ‘the aftermath’, the ruins, the remains of what little is left. The impression they make is that of an empty, half-dismantled hall after the banquet is finished and the dancing is over, or that of deserted, messy autumn beaches. There is also a hint of a hidden presence, of ill-concealed humans living in the folds of the picture. Indeed, the objects themselves, as ‘posing subjects’, are loaded with further meanings, and, to us, familiar physicality: the waterfall pouring from the tree branches is a bride, a sheet after an act of passion, a recyclable plastic sheet, all rolled into one.
It is this shift between reality and fiction, typical of Goudal’s work, that gives birth to infinite imaginative possibilities in her works, possibilities which in turn suggest infinite stories.
By staging the very same artifices of representation, the artist creates a hiatus revealing a suspended ‘interregnum’, where poetic and naturalistic elements coexist, and the multiple temporal levels are compressed into the single space of a fixed image.
Born in 1984 in Paris, Noemie Goudal moved to London in 2003 where she still lives and works. She received a First Class BA at Central St Martins and a Photography MA with Distinctions at the Royal College of Art in 2010.
She has recently been awarded the New Sensations by Saatchi Gallery, the Riccardo Pezza Prize in Italy, the Hoopers Gallery Show, the Metro Imaging Award and the RCA Sustain Award. Her works have been acquired by David Roberts Collection, the Conran Foundation and ArtWise. Goudal’s works have been published in the Art Catlin Guide, the British Journal of Photography, Creative Review, Hot Shoe Magazine, Vogue and Espoarte. Goudal’s first major Solo exhibition has been held at the London Hot Shoe Gallery in October 2010.