The Camargue Horse
In one of her rare static, two-dimensional works, Rachel Rose brings together the real and the imaginary, the documentary and the dreamlike, classical landscape in the style of Nicolas Poussin and fiction. In an imagined landscape constructed from a photograph, a white horse running free in marshland and the disquieting shape of a black egg stand side by side. While the Camargue horse is a cultural and touristic symbol, the white horse refers to myths (such as the chariot of the sun in Greco-Roman antiquity) or to leading artists (such as George Stubbs or Paul Gauguin). The egg has interested Rachel Rose since 2016 and her installation Autoscopic Egg: since her pregnancy, she has associated it with the idea of life and protection, imbuing it with a universal symbolic power. This association questions the environments we think we know insofar as “we ourselves, as living beings, form the landscape”, to use the artist’s own words.
Text written by Chiara Perez as part of the partnership between the École du Louvre and Lafayette Anticipations – Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin.
Exhibition
Lafayette Anticipations - Fondation d'entreprise Galeries Lafayette, Paris (France)
from 13 Mar to 13 Sep 2020