Finalist - 2009 City of Joondalup Invitation Art Award

RAGAMUFFINS @ christophe canato

HUNTING TROPHIES Vol.1 - Fremantle Art Centre - 7 April to 24 May 2009 - Curated by Jasmin Stephens

FREMANTLE ART CENTRE

HUNTING TROPHIES Vol1 @ christophe canato

HUNTING TROPHIES VOL 1
Cristophe Canato’s Insect Bounty
Fremantle Arts Centre from Tuesday, April 7, til Sunday, May 24.
To be open by Margaret Moore

Confronted with the title Hunting Trophies Vol 1, one calls to mind any number of grand-scale stuffed moose-head plaques and bearskin floor rugs decorating the warmly lit salon of a seasoned North American big game hunter. What one doesn’t expect is a series of close-up insect photographs in the light-filled corridors of the Fremantle Arts Centre.
However the title Hunting Trophies, artist Christophe Canato insists, is integral to the work. “There are lots of symbols inside the title. We can imagine these huge things on the wall. It definitely has that idea of something we want to catch and kill and have control over and exhibit as something we’re proud to have killed, but also as something which is beautiful enough to be presentable and exhibited on our wall.”
With insects as his trophies French photographer Canato pushes the conventions, questioning which species do or do not qualify as worthy of ‘hunting’, as well as drawing on the very direct and visceral response human beings have to insects in general.
“These hunting trophies are a little special because they are not the hunting trophies we can see on the wall normally. The photographs are about a fascination with these kinds of species, insects in this case, which are normally something that can be very repulsive for humans but also very fascinating and attractive.”
Having studied art in France at Beaux-Arts, Grenoble, Canato’s interest in contemporary art has since taken a backseat, while he pursued a career in the fashion industry. Working as a commercial, contemporary dance and fashion photographer for many years, he has been able to develop his technical skills, and gain a greater understanding into the nature of the medium. But his passion for contemporary art is unwavering, and this exhibition merges both his artistic and technical capacities.
The insects are photographed in the palm of a human hand, and appear to levitate mysteriously. This flesh background, coupled with the insects’ apparent floating adds to the photographs’ complexity. The warm light given by human flesh removes the photographs from a biological context, making for a somewhat more comfortable confrontation for the viewer.
Yet the juxtaposition of the human with the insect highlights the vulnerability of the subjects, but also heightens the sense of discomfort and repulsion at the thought of these alien creatures in direct contact with the hand. It draws attention to the contradiction between what is alive and dead, which is further confounded by the ‘levitation’ of the insects, which imbues a sense of life in them, despite the title suggesting they are dead, objectified now as trophies.
Heightening this complexity even more is the fact that Canato stresses he doesn’t kill any of the insects, but collects them already dead, and that the title Hunting Trophies means less to him about hunting, but more about “relating to the collecting, the actual act of going out and finding the insects.
“The idea is not to be comfortable, the idea is to have all these ideas – attraction, repulsion, fear, control, fascination.
“So it’s a personal approach but it’s also very general. All of my work I try of course to involve some personal sentiment, but I think it’s definitely, with all my work, a story for everyone. It can be everybody’s story at the same time.”

CLAIRE KROUZECKY
X-PRESS Magazine, 23.04.09, issue n°1158

HUNTING TROPHIES Vol.1 / Media Release Fremantle Art Centre

HUNTING TROPHIES Vol.1 / WHAT'S ON (Fremantle Art Centre: April-June 09)

HUNTING TROPHIES Vol.1/X-Press magazine, 09-04-09, issue n°1156

Un Dimanche en Famille / FOTOFREO fringe 2008, 4 April-4 May / Alliance Française of Perth

Which childhood memories do we remember? Which of these relate specifically to our Sundays spent with family?

Some will remember the pleasures, the sharing, the tenderness of exchanges, and the joy of peaceful and educational Sundays.
The day where the whole family is finally available and reunited. A child’s happiness linked to the love he receives.
Others remember these Sundays as family obligations. Dull days that never end, the heavy atmosphere, being bound by rules, and having to tolerate participating in activities imposed by the family unit. “Go and get some fresh air, it will do you good”…, “It’s been two weeks since we saw your uncle and aunt”.
Christophe Canato’s work, “A family Sunday”, reveals to us the perception of emotions and recollections procured by these family reunions.
These active sensations occur more or less in episodes. “A family Sunday. Episode 1” is a trio of images. A country landscape immersed in cold colours. The trees and the odd person are seen as black silhouettes. This glacial landscape hovers between beauty, unease and serenity.



About Christophe Canato

Since the first works in 1985, on the body, its skin, and its movement in space, it was in 1990 that Christophe Canato began photography through contemporary dance with Jean-Claude Gallotta.
This new medium becomes essential in his research. These image combinations and their associations give birth to a series of diptychs such as, "de l'image aux sens" (from the image to the senses), "trajectoire" (trajectory), “je n'ai pas dit mon dernier mot" (I have not said my last word), but equally through the more personal works such as “no man’s land”, “pièces à conviction" (incriminating evidences)…

Un Dimanche en Famille / 2008 FOTOFREO proposal.

"CRIE!" (SCREAM!) / Perth Town Hall, 13-19 June 2007

" CRIE !" (Scream!) portraits

Screaming action allows us to show happiness, pain, terror or anger feelings.

It is a violent expression, taking place in our innermost selves, finally coming to our throat to broadcast a fullness of sounds.

Shout takes place through the extricated sound, also in the distortion of the face. The distorted face becomes unrecognizable.

Both combinations (Sound/ distortion), can determine the nature of the sound expression. Some screams are closed and others are open. Some are painful some are beneficial.

These transformations start in the breathing time and fade with the lung, emptied of air.

The photograph takes an important role in the temporal space. It materialises the mutation to constitute a laboratory observation. More than traditional portraits, these images give us the occasion to observe and scrutinize the body differently.

The different facial expressions invite us to imagine the nature of associated sounds.

In our formal society, it is difficult sometimes to let your body express sentiments. Shouting can be necessary sometimes. What a perfect opportunity, when the train passes, to scream. I asked people to catch this moment for them and for my camera.

“crie!” is a black & white portrait series started in 2001.

Christophe canato

"CRIE!" (scream!) / Perth Town Hall, panoramic view

"CRIE!" (scream!) / Proposal exhibition / Perth Station

CORPUS EMULSION / ARTRAGE Festival Oct.27 - Nov.5 2006

Corpus Emulsion is an extract of twelve years photographic research, showing for the very first time. A global dance portraits featuring some of the world’s leading companies as seen through the lens of a visionary photographer, Christophe Canato.
Scarrily beautiful.
Experience Christophe Canato’s unique vision of contemporary dance practice at the close of the millennium in these dynamic subtly poignant works.
This body of work represents over a decade of commitment to photographic exploration of the body, its wrap, its tensions and the diversity of emotion these are capable of portraying.

Subjects include: Angelin Prejlocaj, Bernardot Montet, Carolyne Carlson, Catherine Berbessou, Claude Brumachon, Jan Fabre, Pina Bausch, Sankai Juku, Rui Horta, Susanne linke, Jean-Claude Gallotta, Merce Cunningham, Odile Duboc.

Dynamically evocative and subtly poignant, the exhibition of these works is not to be missed.

CORPUS EMULSION / Western Suburbs Weekly, December 12-18 2006

CORPUS EMULSION / Guardian Express October 24-30 2006

"pièces à conviction" (evidences) / FOTOFREO fringe 2006

What is the importance we give to the objects and what are the reasons?

“evidences” is a photographic inventory of my own object, their provenance, their sentimental value and sometime their description location in the living place.

“When I have been proposed to carry out an exhibition in this flat, I found the idea attractive but I couldn’t adapt myself to the place. I found it austere, it wasn’t on my own image.
I had to imagine myself to be in these walls and immediately I linked with my references objects, my world, a window open to the outside.”

"pièces à conviction" (evidences) / gallery 2pièces cuisine 1999, France - LVMH 2001 France, - FOTOFREO Fringe 2006, Perth

VINCENT AWARD 2005

VINCENT AWARD 2005/ INSITE scoop publishing, summer05/06

VINCENT AWARD 2005/ the Perth VOICE n°378

"TRAJECTOIRE" (trajectory) 1998

"NO MAN'S LAND" autoportrait / La SACEM Private Art Collection

"From the earliest years of my youth I had had the notion that every person has his own no man’s land, a domain that is his and his alone. The life everyone sees is one thing; the other belongs to the individual, and it is none of anyone else’s business. By that in no way do I mean to imply that, from an ethical standpoint, one is moral and the other one amoral, or, from that of the police, one licit and the other illicite. But man lives at intervals unchecked, in freedom and in private, alone or with someone, be it for an hour a day, an evening a week, or a day a month; he lives for that private, free life of his from one evening (or day) to the next: those hours exist in a continuum.
Those hours either complement something in his visible life or else possess some independent significance. They may be a joy or a necessity, or habit, but they are crucial to demarcating any sort of “general line”. If a man does not exercise this right of his, or if because of extenuating circumstances this right is denied him, he will one day wake up to find that he has never really found himself, and there is something depressing in that. I feel sorry for people who are alone only in the bathroom, never anywhere else.
An inquisition or a totalitarian state, incidentally, can never allow this second life, which eludes any and every control. It is no accident that they arrange people’s lives in such a way that the only solitude permitted is that of the bathroom. Barracks and prisons often lack even that.
In this no man’s land, when a man lives in freedom and private, strange things can happen: kindred souls can each other; a book can be read and understood especially keenly, music heard in some special way. In the quiet and solitude a thought might occur that changes a man’s life, ruins or saves him. Perhaps in this no man’s land people cry, or drink, or think about something no one else knows, or they examine their bare feet, or thy try to find a new place for parting on their balding head, or they leaf through a picture magazine of half-naked beauties and muscle-men – I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. In childhood and even in adolescence (and in old age as well) we don’t always feel the need for that other life. Nonetheless, it’s wrong to think of that other life, that no man’s land as a luxury, and everything else as normal. That’s not where the diving line falls. It falls along the line of absolute privacy and absolute freedom."

Extract : "the revolt", Nina Berberova- Act Sud Edition

"de l'image aux sens" SYNESTHÉSIE (synaesthesia) 1997 / winner prize JEUNE CRÉATION 1997, Paris / second prize BUSINESS & DECISION 2000, Paris.