Béatrice Helg “Geometries of silence

Swiss artist Béatrice Helg has established herself as a singular figure in the history of staged photography. Far removed from hyper-realistic or narrative approaches, since the 1980s she has cultivated a style that blends space, light and matter, earning her international recognition.
Influenced by the Russian avant-garde and constructivism, passionate about music, sensitive to notions of space and time, architecture, theater and opera, Béatrice Helg creates installations in her studio where sculpture, painting, staging and, above all, light interact. She composes installations from recycled materials or from materials she imagines and shapes specially for the shoot. But the essential material remains light, which has become the medium through which all revelation is possible.
Sculptures or ephemeral architectures, her monumental works emerge from the depths of silence; they unveil universes of light and shadow of a strange beauty, as poetic as it is spiritual, opening onto the infinite, a quest for the absolute or the search for an inner mystery.
This is the most important exhibition ever devoted to Béatrice Helg. In a refined scenography, it presents a corpus of over 70 photographs, most of them large-format, combining emblematic images from her career – from the Théâtres de la lumière, Esprit froissé, Crépuscule, Éclats, Cosmos, Résonance and Natura series – with previously unpublished works.
This exhibition is part of the “Arles Associé” series at Rencontres d’Arles, and has been generously supported by Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council.