Carte Postale des Tropiques (2012-2013) by Thomas Tronel-Gauthier participates to the Everyday Abstraction : Images at Work Abstract room project.

This installation echoes the distended temporality observed and felt in the Marquesas Islands. A recent photograph of Atuona’s “Workshop of the Tropics” as it was conceived and designed by Paul Gauguin to welcome his artist friends from mainland, is printed on a watercolor paper postcard. Over a period of one minute the image deteriorates and seems to be subjected to an accelerated temporality, leaving in the end only a yellowed postcard comparable to those found altered by the sun on the tourist sites. The image is actually degraded by running water, the printed inks being dissolved at its contact, revisiting the watercolor technique. The installation confronts an old black and white television set relegated to the status of screen and an HD video projector, replaying in this way the insular cohabitation of modernity and desuetude. During this video loop, photography gives way to an image whose origin can no longer be dated (…).

Thomas Tronel-Gauthier, Carte Postale des Tropiques, 2012-2013 / HD video on painted TV set / 1’00 loop.
© Thomas Tronel-Gauthier, Courtesy Thomas Tronel-Gauthier