Emilia Genuardi

Emilia Genuardi:

I studied Art History and Architecture at the University of Manchester. Back then, I had been living in Luxembourg and wanted to move to a country far away. I’ve always been passionate about Art History thanks to my parents, who are antique dealers and collectors; my father’s Italian and my mother’s French. The architecture department of my university had a darkroom, that’s where I discovered how to print photographs. After graduating, I settled in France and my first job was in a press agency selling photos of celebrities. Through that, I entered the world of photography and worked for an agency created by a group of photographers before working for a gallery. I quickly learnt that participating in a fair was essential for a gallery to meet people, however, I found the format tiring, because you’re in very big spaces that have a certain coldness towards the visitors. Furthermore, galleries have to put as many works as possible on the walls so they can sell as much as possible to cover the high participation fee.

Emilia Genuardi:

Exactly for this reason. At the time, I also wanted to start collecting and, with my different hats, support contemporary creation and launch a fair in my image. A ppr oc he is quite a selfish project! I wanted to have a fair on a human scale, where one would be able to remember what one’s seen upon leaving, featuring risk-tasking works and solo shows, so visitors could explore in depth each artist’s work. Above all, I aimed to create a real curatorial project based on the principle of showing artists who experiment with images.

Emilia Genuardi:

Through the choice of venue, a private mansion in the first arrondissement, I wanted to give a very private tone to the fair, breaking the coldness of the classic format to create an environment that’s open to discussion and encounters. It’s very important to feel as if the photographers are inviting visitors into their homes.

Emilia Genuardi:

The first criterion is that I don’t select galleries but artists. Each time, I try to bring together a maximum of 16 proposals that are both complementary and singular. Once selected, I contact the galleries representing the artists and ask them to participate.

Emilia Genuardi:

We could discuss this for months because photography is born out of experimentation. What’s incredible is how contemporary artists are finding novel, singular ways of experimenting with old processes and combining them with new technologies like Artificial Intelligence. So we’ll always discover new artists with fantastic projects even if they’re using techniques that have existed for a very long time. Today, photographers are experimenting more and more with paper and ways of framing, sometimes sculpturally, going beyond the frame. It’s a trend that’s been growing for several years and shows to what extent photography is a very, very rich medium.

Emilia Genuardi:

In terms of innovative experimentation, we Antoine De Winter’s magnificent work. Thanks to Artificial Intelligence, he creates very disturbing, almost hypnotising portraits [of fake followers on Instagram]. He combines cyanotype techniques on fabric with gold leaf and ancient processes. There’s also the wonderful work of Jesse Wallace who makes documentary photos, mostly digital. From these documentary images, he creates new stories and structural objects that leave a lot to the imagination. Then there’s Susanne Wellm who weaves her own photographs and the fantastic work of Isabelle Chapuis who gathers earth from a territory and mixes it with photographic emulsion, making something almost anthropological. In terms of historical processes, there are the terrific heliotypes [of family portraits] by Alessandra Calò.

Emilia Genuardi:

All the proposals are linked, in one way or another, to memory and identity, whether they start from a concept or research based on the environment, architecture or ecology, like the works of Daniel Bourgais, or very personal, theatrical stories like the wonderful works of Sara Imloul. Then there’s Jackie Mulder who, through drawing, painting, sewing and cutting, revisits memory and offers a new interpretation in in her works.

Emilia Genuardi:

In 2017, something really surprised me. One could discover the photographic medium in two environments that didn’t know or rub shoulders with each other: contemporary art galleries and photo galleries. If we brought these two environments together, we obtained a scene that had never been shown before, with visual artists who use photography in their practices and photographers represented by photo galleries.

Today, we see increasingly more photographs at contemporary art fairs and more contemporary art galleries presenting visual artists at photography fairs. I hope that Approche reflects this.

Emilia Genuardi:

Like other events, I’m often asked by online sales platforms to put the fair online. Until now, I’ve never accepted such a collaboration because I’d never buy anything online through these platforms myself. Some time ago, the artist’s agent Florence Moll [FMA Le Bureau] presented this project with Dimitri Daniloff, an artist and collector, to me. I’ve found a way to do a mini a ppr oc he online, called Extended, in a virtual space, keeping this desire to have a commercial show conceived like an exhibition and, above all, with an intimate and private format. When you enter, you’ll have an avatar and I could come and see you in the form of my avatar to introduce you to the artists who could talk about the works they’ve made especially for the show and that are displayed on the walls. It starts on Friday, November 15 at 2pm and runs until Sunday, November 17 at midnight.

Emilia Genuardi:

I don’t want to grow in terms of size but I have the ambition to develop partnerships with other [players] who support contemporary creation or other fairs. Two years ago, I created a second rendez-vous, unRepresented, that takes place in the spring. It’s dedicated to artists that aren’t represented by a gallery and are proposed by a collector. The ambience that we create each year at a ppr oc he is a bit like a family. I love introducing artists to institutions that might exhibit them one year later or to publishers that might publish a book on their work. It’s making these connections that interest me.