Melchior Tersen: Planetarium

EVENT DESCRIPTION

agnès b. is delighted to announce their latest collaboration with the emerging Parisian photographer and archivist Melchior Tersen by bringing the “Planetarium” exhibition to the Hong Kong audience, inviting the public to explore the French pop art and culture. Featuring 450 photographs of unique objects taken by Melchior Tersen in Paris, the exhibition is running now until 27 March, 2022 at agnès b. concept store at K11 Art Mall.

This unique collaboration perfectly showcases agnès b.’s unfailing support of emerging artists, especially considering that Melchior Tersen perfectly represents the current young and trendy photographic scene in Paris. Melchior Tersen’s photography documents his obsessive nightly and daily wanderings and questions the standpoints, attitudes, behaviours, and structures of contemporary culture.

Melchior Tersen’s art is about collectibles, he shared without hesitation, “my works are inspired by my everyday life, every picture is a moment of life.” He further explained, “There has been a moment where I did a lot of portraits of people. But after some time, I prefer to show what humans do rather than what they are. I have always loved objects, always bought stuffs, and taken pictures of figurines or clothes. To me, it is just like doing the portrait of an object.”

“He himself is an admirer of the culture he portrays. But above all, this is what he’s passionate about and what drives his everyday life. Melchior Tersen is a first-person photographer.” Valentin Vennesson, art curator.

This exhibition is another collaboration between agnès b. and Melchior Tersen after the group exhibition “…Photographers… Artists And The Snap Cardigan” in 2019, celebrating the brand’s 40th anniversary of the infamous cardigan of the same name created by agnès b.. He also participated in the group photographic exhibition at the Galerie du jour agnès b. Miscellaneous in 2021. His solo show, Planetarium, will be toured in Tokyo this summer.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Born in 1987 in Paris, Melchior Tersen mainly uses photography as an artistic medium. Inspired by different scenes and expressiveness of popular culture, he is constantly photographing and documenting, while experimenting with the multiple expressions of contemporary culture.

He seeks out the detritus of this culture -cans, plastic, worn sneakers and branded t-shirts -and places them in the everyday. Born in the suburbs of Paris, Melchior explores and maps the city during his nightly and daily wanderings, walking for hours in search of the unknown. Obsessed with collecting and documenting, the artist goes to excess, relentlessly creating his own style.

There is no moralizing, no fetishism, no idealization in these moments of the Parisian atmosphere that Melchior captures with such precision. His photography is a pure product of inclusion and observation: by providing extensive documentation of contemporary culture, he manages to capture the essence of things that everyone is used to seeing.

In the documentary aspect of his work, Melchior goes beyond the pure aesthetic and is unconcerned with the preciousness of the medium. It is neither fictional nor romanticized. The power of the image takes precedence over the object,which exists only as a physical conduit for the message. However, this does not prevent the poetic aspect from shining through in his photographs.

His work, whose essence is close to activism, speaks of the demolition of structures, the expansion of points of view, attitudes and behaviors: Melchior describes the world today by working with the raw material that makes it up.