Book Presentation and Exhibition Opening
Martin Essl »Le Chateau Rouge II« 12.11.2026 5:00 PM
5 Rue Bailly, 75003 Paris
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Two years after “Le bateau ivre”, a photobook that led him into a Paris tinged with surrealist overtones, Martin Essl returns to the Château Rouge district. From there, he wanders once again through the city – in an introspective and labyrinthine exploration guided by the colour blue. Blue is usually associated with peace and stability. However, here the teal blue of a rubbish bag, the cobalt blue of a wrecked car, the muted blue of a corrugated metal barrier and the azure blue of the traces left by a refugee camp on Avenue de Flandre tell the story of a Paris that appears calm at first, yet is clearly changing. Urgency and precarity are gradually asserting themselves, transforming the city‘s appearance.
The photographer captures cracks and abysses, filling the fissures with the yellow and gold of the sun‘s rays as if Paris were a piece of ceramic chipped by the biting north wind. Against the weight of this observation stands a vital impulse that transforms the photographic work into a personal diary. Émile Zola, Rainer Maria Rilke, Virginia Woolf, Georges Perec, Chris Marker, to name but a few, serve as beacons and landmarks, tracing a path, drawing a mental map and establishing connections that recover the lived, human dimension of the city. 
With “Le Château Rouge No. 2”, the Austrian artist, who has become the “Peasant of Paris”, lowers his drawbridge and invites us into his room of one’s own. He reminds us that to photograph is to take possession of a foreign language in which “yesterday” means “always”.
(Sarah Sauquet, Paris 2026)

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