Karim Kal is an artist who was recently honoured at the fifteenth edition of the Lyon Biennale of contemporary art (2019).

BIOGRAPHY IN A FLASH

  • ​​​Karim Kal was born in 1977, and currently lives and works in Lyon.
  • A graduate of the art schools in Avignon and Grenoble, he then studied at the l’École de photographie de Vevey in Switzerland until 2003.
  • Since 2003 his artistic work deals with the social, urban, and historic reality of the world in which it evolves.

A DOCUMENTARY APPROACH

Karim Kal is interested in forgotten places. He works with light to create uncertainty within these constrained spaces, questioning the relationship between authorities and the power struggles that occur there.

His night-time shots using a flash make the image tend toward abstraction; the artist thus reveals the social, cultural, and political markers inscribed in urban architecture.

Four of his photographs enter the collection of the MAMC+ today thanks to the generosity of the Friends of the Museum.

The photographs come from three different series, including Passages and Sentiers, developed by the artist since 2016.

  • The Passages series was carried out in Villefontaine in the greater Lyon region. These passageways designed for foot traffic represent fragile spaces which produce black rectangles on the surface of the image that are both enigmatic and unsettling.
  • The Sentiers series treats the areas around bus shelters and more specifically the shortcuts gradually created by the passing of residents.

RESONATING

The works of Karim Kal directly resonate with the artists represented in the MAMC+ collection, be it the documentary style of photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher or Thomas Ruff, or the geometric abstraction of painters like Peter Halley et Olivier Mosset. 

These acquisitions fall within the museum’s proactive policy of promoting contemporary photography and works with regional contexts

To be discovered at the Musée until mid-July 2020: