Martin Essl
"Le Château Rouge"

Exhibition: 1 September – 8 October 2016
Opening reception: Thursday, 15 September, 6–9pm
The artist will be present.

"Le Château Rouge" is the first volume of a series of photographic essays conceived by the Austrian-born artist Martin Essl (he was born in 1982 and moved to Paris in 2012). Named after the Paris metro station, this work presents itself as a sensitive and urban fiction about the photographer’s daily life.

The gallery had a huge coup de coeur on this beautiful book where the artist transforms a ordinary reality through the filter of photography. Each photograph chosen by Martin Essl is a poem with acid colors and light that illuminates the details of the city, the body of a woman, a piece of sky or the front of a bus with a magical aura.

Born in 1982, the Austrian photographer Martin Essl lives and works in Paris. He discovered photography as a child in the darkroom his father had at home and studied at the University of Art in Linz, Austria, and at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et des Métiers d’Art in Paris. In July 2015, he published his first book, Le Château Rouge N°1, at Kehrer Verlag. First of a series of photo essays and the result of a three-year work started when Martin Essl moved to Paris. The Paris metro station which gives the book its title becomes the starting point of a dreamlike and colorful fiction. The photographer offers a poetic journey to the viewer’s imagination, an intimate and luminous diary of daily life. Le Château Rouge N°1 was shortlisted at the Rencontres d’Arles Photo Folio Review in 2015.