BETTINA RHEIMS OUT OF STANDARD

You will be puzzled and speechless in front of this game of constant mirror.

Because what fascinates this extraordinary artist is not so much the plastic as the trouble and the mystery:

Bettina Rheims has made women her central photographic subject for four decades while questioning genres.

"Khôl flowing, veiled pupil, abandonment of the bodies, the women of Bettina Rheims are in an in-between. " "After love or after a break, women are never as beautiful as when they are a little defeated," says Bettina Rheims.

The biggest celebrities have submitted to his goal. Madonna, Charlotte Rampling, Carole Bouquet, Marianne Faithfull, Kylie Minogue, Barbara and others appear more in their flesh than in their plastic.

The disturbing aura surrounds Charlotte Rampling with a veil of mystery.

In the same way Madonna's feline eroticism. The queen of pop, entrusted in 1994 a photo shoot to Bettina Rheims in the style of "Chambre close", her flagship series and founder, in shabby hotel rooms ...

The star wants this restored scene in New York for a whole night's sleep.

The spectator feels troubled by his platinum and feline beauty of the "Ciccone" rubbing against the wall, his face buried in his angle.

The references of women to the dressing of masters of the 21st century slips into her voyeuristic spirit.

Because "Bettina has a woman's look on women, and that changes everything. When undressing, naked, she gets an intimacy from her models ", summarizes Jean-Luc Monterosso.

She varies her experiences. In 2005 " Heroines" appears more like a work that wants to be a tribute to the sculpture.

The photographer then collaborates with designer Jean Colonna to dress women's original clothes.

Contemporary icons all dressed in old dresses emanate then an offbeat beauty

. But throughout her career, she continues to question the representations of gender and androgyny as evidenced by the series " Gender Studies " of 2012 already preceded by the series Modern Lovers of the late 80s and AIDS.

The originality of 2012 emanates from the device linking image and sound (by Frédéric Sanchez) in the presentation of 27 sound portraits of young men and women.

Then the power of the intimate spell reinforced by the sonorous testimony of each portrait and explodes in the space of the exhibition.

Other surprising variations will challenge you in the spatial and not chronological organization of this exhibition on three floors.

The parallel of idol musicians of the 80s and those of women held in prisons today for example ..

Also disguising his clichés of feline women, raw, sometimes provocative, confronted with muses draped in their aura.

You will understand. Photographer Bettina Rheims keeps questioning and magnifying woman and femininity. An appointment not to be missed.