Françoise & Daniel Cartier

Françoise Cartier (1952) and Daniel Cartier (1950), exhibit as f&d cartier and live in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland. Since 1995, the visual artist couple merged their practices –plastic arts & photography- to move toward new approaches. Examining two indispensable prerequisites for photography – light and sensitive paper – they opt for “camera-less” combined with “found-objects” concepts, resulting in photo-graphics in the literal sense: the light draws a unique image on sensitive photographic paper, without being bundled by any lens. They experiment with various kinds of collected silver gelatin photosensitive papers and light, creating unfixed and evolutional site-specific chromatic photo paper series and installations. Series of daylight photograms, extreme solarisations, reinterpretation of albumen glass plate’s are completed, exemplifying their minimalist tendencies, the duo questions everyday life, intimacy, passing of time, the position and role of the artist & the Image in today’s society. They were nominated for Swiss Photo Award 2016 in Fine Art category for their series “Wait and See“.

Grand Tour Revisited

The Grand Tour was the initiatory journey from Europe (mainly from Italy) to the Middle East. It was undertaken mainly by European upper-class young men. They intended to perfect their education and get to know the ancient world. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary. It served as an educational rite of passage. The tradition has become more popular even in the middle class societies when a rail and steamship travel made the journey less of a burden, and Thomas Cook made the “Cook’s Tour” by word “tourism”.

“Grand Tour” utilizes conventional 19th century images of popular travel routes in Italy combined with recent images by the artists to comment on the meaning of travel and the role of images in shaping our knowledge of place.

Exhibition “Grand Tour Revisited” by Francoise and Daniel Cartier supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.