Destruction – Reconstruction
Timequakes (Tremblement de temps) est consecutive a l’experience vecue par l’artiste en mars 2011 lors du tremblement de terre survenu au Japon. En guise d’exutoire, elle a transpose le chaos des destructions materielles en telescopage temporel. Elle cree ainsi de veritables ex-votos a partir de portraits humanistes ou de cour des XVeme et XVI eme siecles, entremeles de portraits photographiques contemporains sur fond de flux lumineux.

Compression-Stratification.
Dans cette serie, l’artiste recycle et recompose des photographies qu’elle avait prises, compilees puis archivees afin de constituer des sources de productions futures : portraits de modeles a la beaute intemporelle, reproduction de peintures constituant son propre musee imaginaire et images tremblees des lumieres de Tokyo by night, metaphore du seisme. Ce procede donne a voir des concretions qui expriment la collision et la sedimentation du temps.

Figuration-Abstraction.
En reference a la peinture qui, lors de l’apparition de la photographie, a evolue vers plus d’abstraction, la serie Timequakes mixe ainsi la representation humaine a des fonds traites comme des paysages contemportains. Ces figures hybrides jettent un pont entre ces deux territoires que sont la peinture et la photographie, tous deux devolus a l’art du portrait, mais aussi entre l’art ancien et l’art contemporain, entre figuration et abstraction.

Souvenir-Oubli.
En outre, en revisitant notre patrimoine historique, en s’appropriant des elements provenant de plusieurs œuvres et en les recombinant au moyen de techniques de compositions, de juxtapositions et de collages multiples pour n’en faire qu’une, l’artiste s’emploie, a travers le biais de ces emprunts et ces detournements, a créer une image trompeuse qui ait la valeur et la densite d’un vrai/faux souvenir, fidele au fonctionement de la memoire, faussement nette et veritablement trouble.

Traduire-Trahir.
La serie Timequakes constitue certes une reflexion sur notre heritage culturel et la crise de la mémoire collective saturée en même temps qu’en perte de repères : de nos jours, le présent éternel écrase les perspectives historiques -…, mais elle pose aussi, au-dela du discours esthetique precieux et l’apparence du pastiche, la question essentielle du leurre propre a toute image.

Ruin – Reconstruction
Timequakes series was born from artist’s experience of the earthquake that occurred in Japan in March 2011. As an outlet for what she experienced at that time, she transposed the chaos of material destruction with temporal collisions. These are votive pictures created through the mingling of 15th to 16th century painted portraits with contemporary photo portraits against a luminous background.

Compression – Layering
Trough a large number of photographs originally shot, compiled and stored as a source for future works – portraits of models with eternal, unchanging beauty, copies of paintings collected in her own imaginary art museum, and night images of Tokyo in quavering light that will become a metaphor for the earthquake. For this series she has tapped into these and reworked them into new compositions. Using this method, they appear as a compressed layering that exposes the temporal collisions and sedimentations.

Concrete – Abstract
When photographs first appeared, paintings tended to become more abstract. Reflecting this trend in Timequakes, the artist mixed character expression in a background made to look like a contemporary context. The hybrid character images in the portrait genre form a bridge between painting and photography. At the same time, they form a link between ancient and contemporary art, and figuration and abstraction.

Recollection – Oblivion
Reviewing our historical legacy, Pigalle combined works of the past by using composition, juxtaposition and collage techniques. Through this bias of borrowing and appropriation, the artist attemps to create illusions with the value and intensity of imagined and real memories. The pictures she create are faithful to the workings of memory – they are as clear as deception and are indeed morally questionable.

Interpretation – Betrayal
Timequakes is one speculation about our cultural heritage and the collective memory we share as a society. Today this memory is not only in a saturated state but has lost all useful markers and is threatened by crisis. This is because the eternal present is crushing and flattening our historical perspective. Beyond the works that appear as pretentious aesthetic propositions and imitations, Timequakes series poses a fundamental question regarding the false nature inherent in all pictures and paintings.