BILL TRAVIS

Pensées/Désirs (Thoughts/Desires):
Paintings/Photographs by Bill Travis Exhibition at Les Mots à la Bouche
(6, rue Sainte Croix de la Bretonnerie, 75004 PARIS)
22 September - 12 October 2005

Who doesn't have an interior monologue, that silent conversation with oneself that lasts a lifetime? And yet, encountering a flood of humanity, in the street, at Les Mots à la Bouche or elsewhere, what do we hear of these intimate thoughts if not what we read, or think we read, in the face of the other? It's this contrast between the visible and the invisible that Travis evokes in the series Pensées "Thoughts" (images mounted directly on glass) and that's why he puts words behind the faces, present but barely legible; even if we are able to decipher some words, their meaning eludes us. The most interesting thing about images is often what they don't illustrate.
But thought is not everything; looking at the other also provokes desire. Interspersed with these works on glass, other pieces with warmer tones represent the man who seduces.
We can think of these representations as modern icons, for their technique of gilt boards and their concept of the ideal, with the difference that in this case the image expresses a desire to touch, to caress and to possess the subject.

Bio
A New York-based artist and photographer, Travis has exhibited in several U.S. galleries as well as at the Museum of Photography of Rafaela (Argentina). His works belong to several public and private collections on both sides of the Atlantic and are published in reviews in the United States and Italy. This show is his first one in France.
A word on technique All of the images are, at the outset, digital photographs, elaborated by hand after printing and transferred onto glass. Unlike the photographic tradition which favors multiples, each work in this exhibition is a unique work.