Ac­cord­ing to the myth of the daugh­ter of Butadès the Pot­ter from Sycione, paint­ing was in­vented by out­lin­ing a shadow. Pho­tog­ra­phy didn't exist then but al­ready gave birth to art of paint­ing. Today, this par­tic­u­lar way of fix­ing space through a light cast onto a plan has re­mained an es­sen­tial part of many young French painters' work. For the Year France–Rus­sia, Gallery NIVET-CAR­ZON pre­sents five artists who share the use of pho­tog­ra­phy at the core of their prac­tice.

Michel Cas­taignet worked for sev­eral years from old pho­tographs and slides that he col­lects around the world and which he breathes new di­men­sion, es­pe­cially play­ing in his own way of paint­ing a 'passé' in­ten­tion. He then plays on fram­ing in­side the paint­ing it­self or false ac­ci­den­tal fold­ing of a worn photo.

Joseph Choi, Ko­rean-French painter, fits per­fectly into this pro­ject be­cause he works not only from pho­tos or videos, but pre­cisely be­cause he wants to give his work a pho­to­graphic look, glossy, with the su­per­po­si­tion of al­ter­na­tive lay­ers of paint, resin and lace to ac­cen­tu­ate the 'pix­e­la­tion ef­fect'. The pro­ject / / Peo­ple # / / in­cludes pho­tographs and video cov­er­age of the visit by JK Kennedy in Dal­las in 1962 shortly be­fore his as­sas­si­na­tion and seeks to rep­re­sent anony­mous peo­ple dur­ing this tragedy that would mark the world.

Hervé Ic. Metic­u­lous­ness, pre­ci­sion, ob­sti­nacy, ob­ses­sion, de­fine the act of his paint­ing. Depth, aware­ness, hu­mil­ity and del­i­cacy de­fine his thought. He frees the real to cre­ate an har­mony be­tween its var­i­ous strata, through suc­ces­sive lay­ers and trans­paren­cies, to­wards a quasi-sat­u­ra­tion, turn­ing the paint­ing into a screen. A psy­cho­log­i­cal re­vealer, which tells us the pre­sent time.

Na­taliya Lyakh, pho­tog­ra­pher and video­g­ra­pher, pro­poses a se­ries of pho­to­graphic prints on can­vas. Pro­ject /Wind­screen/ – urban scenes in­stan­ta­neous slope to­wards ab­strac­tion – of­fers aes­thetic and pho­to­graphic re­flec­tion on our re­la­tion­ship with in­va­sive col­lec­tive mem­ory.

Cyril Hatt was born in 1975, works and lives in Rodez. Stereo­scopic pho­tog­ra­phy is a process which gives the il­lu­sion of re­lief. Two pho­tographs of a same sub­ject are shot from two dif­fer­ent an­gles. The two pho­tographs are su­per­im­posed recre­at­ing a dis­tance be­tween the eyes.

The ex­hi­bi­tion sup­ported by French In­sti­tute in St.-Pe­ters­burg and Min­istry for Cul­ture of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion