Dove Allouche. AgBr

For twenty years, Dove Allouche developed a work where drawing and photography act as a revealer. “My approach is that of a presbyopic,” he explains. I would like to reveal what is too close to our sight to be seen, what is here, right next to us, but through which we look to look at something else. Seize “the invisibility of what is too visible” as Michel Foucault would say. »

At the mahJ, Dove Allouche's interest fell on a photography of the museum's collections by Félix Bonfils (1831-1885), one of the first shots of the Dead Sea. Using samples taken from the image and enlarged under a microscope, the artist highlights the links the Dead Sea and the medium of its representation: salt. The title of the work, AgBr, designates in chemistry silver bromide, a metallic salt whose blackening in light is at the origin of the photograph. In nine images, AgBr offers a poetic rapprochement between Yām HaMélah (the salty sea), and the chemistry of the photographic image by revealing the salt that composes it on a scale imperceptible to the eye.

Born in 1972, Dove Allouche lives and works in Paris. A former resident of the Villa Medici (Rome), he has notably exhibited at the LaM in Villeneuve-d'Ascq, at the Palais de Tokyo, at the Center Pompidou, at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver. He is the 2020 winner of the Maratier prize awarded by the Pro mahJ foundation.

Created by Claire Maratier in memory of her husband Amédée Maratier, with whom she shared a taste for contemporary art, this prize awarded by the Pro mahJ foundation rewards a contemporary artist. Agnès Lévy (2003), Max Wechsler (2003), Pierrette Bloch (2005), Iris Sara Schiller (2007), Mikael Levin (2009), Cécile Reims (2011), Nira Pereg (2013) and Moshe Ninio (2015) its winners.