In Geography of Abandonment, Raymond Meeks explores the elastic
nature and meaning of home and place. Place to become, dwell within,
leave and return to. “Place” imbued with memory, present reality, as
well as the unknowns posed by the future. Meeks reveals his fascination
with the ritualistic processes that inform notions of transcendence and
grief. Our departures from home as a necessary abandoning while finding
our way in the world, being returned to the emptiness of pure existence.
Meeks’
work is informed by a constant recalibration between inner and outer
world, the canny and the uncanny, the particular and the universal. In
his hands, the camera is an instrument that dissects ritual and renders
form, briefly making the world around us comprehensible, and rendering
us comprehensible to ourselves.
His personal and professional
relationship with the photographer Adrianna Ault has been a primary
source of inspiration and collaboration for Meeks over the years. Both
artists struggle with the notion of personal meaning, especially as the
years pass, children leave, and their own relationship with each other
shifts and evolves. Meeks watches his partner, and poetically observes:
She seems to be expecting something, some form she could take possession of.
A borrowed form, perhaps, one that could express the real pain inside.
An absolute breaking and repurposing of truth.
A place where truth could be gotten at, but also where truth could be defended.
A burning experience of molding herself.
A sudden glimpse of her own being.
His photographs of Ault, and the photographs they have made together, convey a restlessness astir within the quotidian, a condition manifest in his work, and the experimental nature of his photographic approach and processes.
12€ : France
19€ : Europe (CEE)
27€ : Europe, non EEC countries
Rest of the world : 43€
or remise en main propre à Paris