Conversation at Cecilia Brunson Projects
CECILIA Nicolas great to have you in London. I have to say that when you came with your first picture, I knew you had a really interesting project, and my fingers itched to make an exhibition. How did you come about these images of pubs at night?
NICOLAS London is so hyper photographed that I decided to start exploring the city at night, on its empty hours, on sunday midnights. One of the things that immediately caught my attention was this image of the pubs at their closing hour. This old british institution, this gathering place appeared for me in a whole new perspective. They were like sinking ships in the middle of the night, with a very seductive mix of pleasure and despair but in a kind of harmony. I was at first sight shocked and in love with this image.
CECILIA And the night itself has been a subject for so many artistic movements...
NICOLAS Especially for the Romantics, that I admire a lot... they found in the night an alternative to the clarity of the enlightenment. I think it is the same again...
CECILIA Yes!, and despite the darkness of the night, there is a sort of warmth coming out of the pub even though it’s at its closing hour...
NICOLAS It is part of this ambivalence of the image, although the pub is closing and this darkness is covering everything, then this sort of warmth appears... they, the patrons are a few, but they are carrying a fire, that is contrasting with the emptiness and quietude of the exterior. It is a very special and beautiful moment with a very special atmosphere...
CECILIA And if we associate the work with Hopper obviously, and Manet. Is that something you would associate yourself with?
NICOLAS It was unavoidable, when I saw these pub images, to think in Hopper’s Nighthawks and secondly in Manet as you point...
CECILIA I am thinking of his “Bar at the Folie-Bergere” painting...
NICOLAS Absolutely, this sad girl behind the bar... but mostly Hopper. He was the portrayer of the great depression at the United States, of the hopeless sensation behind the optimism in the economic growth. I love when hopper paints empty houses or buildings because he is actually painting people, portraits of people even though you can’t see them
CECILIA I find that really interesting, because, just like hopper was capturing that moment of depression, you are capturing a city in a moment where there is an absolute affluence, and it’s a culture of excess. Is this a sort of critique?
NICOLAS It’s just the bringing back of historic sensibilities... more than a critique I prefer to talk of an awareness of the gigantic shadows that the future projects in our present -following Shelley, the poet-. And part of the seductiveness of these images is that you can see that affluence but you also can see the other side of the story.
CECILIA Aha, and in this image for example?. What’s that’s story behind?
NICOLAS This has been Martha’s family pub for over 80 years. I know the story because many times, waiting for the perfect time, I went inside the pub and started talking with their owners. Martha is selling the pub, she is closing, nobody is coming, a buyer wants to build luxury apartments there. So I tried too, to make these portraits of pubs, like people’s portraits, just in the way I think Hopper did.
CECILIA In the photos, but particularly in the video, as a viewer, it is very captivating and you feel a bit like a voyeur...
NICOLAS The idea was to immerse the viewer in this special atmosphere. It is very voyeuristic at first sight, but sometimes you get into the image and become part of the scene too...
CECILIA And this kind of mounting of the photos, I think it helped a lot
NICOLAS Exactly. At a quick look, you only see glare and reflections. But having a second gaze you start to see things, you penetrate the surface, you get into the scenery and find details in the shadows and capture the whole atmosphere. It was a way for slowing down the images...
CECILIA And that’s what I find very appealing as well about this project. Normally I find that in photography, you look at pictures and you capture things immediately, whereas painting needs a different kind of time. And what these photographies do, it’s linking both worlds. There is a moment when you begin to see, to discover…
NICOLAS In all my works I always try to slow down the images with a steady and contemplative gaze and aesthetics. This has to do with the actual difficulty of the images to trigger a dive into ourselves. Most images nowadays only allude to the immediate, to the external. I think that art must be capable of slowing down the images as well as ourselves, to make us look inwards and detonate some sort of enquiry...
CECILIA It’s like when your eyes need a moment to be able to see after entering a dark room
NICOLAS Yea that is a beautiful metaphor!
CECILIA And the title of this series... is ‘We spin around the night’, which is also the title of Guy Debord’s 1978 film...
NICOLAS That’s right. The Situationists appeared, as in most of my work, in the act of wandering around the city at night looking for pubs. So this gave the name to the original photo series, although the exhibition is called Meditation on an ending. It is an old latin palindrome that Debord rescued –in my point of view- as a tribute to those who are searching without sleeping and get burnt by the fire...
CECILIA So the performative component of your work... it is present here too?
NICOLAS Absolutely. Although I do not appear explicitly, for me the performative work is as present as in the other pieces. When you see the whole photo series and the video, with their titles that refer to specific places around the city, you realize in your mind the performance itself. This drifting was the performance and it is very present for me in a more metaphorical and beautiful way sometimes.
CECILIA Your practice works really nice, reading it as an ethnographical investigation... you travel to different places and do very different things but all linked in a way.
NICOLAS Every place I have inhabited for long or short periods, was a trigger for me. My creative process is deeply linked to a place, it’s a response to it, to a reality. It is a buffer for approaching it, for being capable of assimilating what I like but also what scares me
CECILIA And where next?
NICOLAS London still has a lot to squeeze!
CECILIA: Ok Nicolas, great to have you here.
NICOLAS Thanks to you and all the best and luck with your new project