Matthieu Charneau, new work

22 MAY – 21 AUGUST 2021

Through diverse practice including film, installation, performance and photography, Matthieu Charneau examines the symbolic and emotional aspects of situations and places, personal history and collective memory.

One of his recurring themes is the nature of time. Fascinated by how and why a particular moment in time stands out and how it relates to specific points of arrival and departure, he foregrounds historical consciousness through a multiple focus on the present and crucial pasts.

How do twists and turns of individual fates fit into theories of time, place, and the meaning of human lives? By asking himself that question, his work becomes a balancing act between interconnectedness and the search of lost time.

Much like Proust’s “À la recherche du temps perdu”’, Charneau depicts his journey through an allegorical search for truth withmetaphors that enrich a collective pictorial language.

He often incorporates stills from Super 8 films and digital recordings into sequences, which appropriate cinema’s frame-by-frame format. More symbol and metaphor than narrative, it expresses Charneau’s need to remember and record how one fragment of a single moment in time leads to the next.

His preference for using available light, blurring and graininess has figures dissolving into shadow and film grain. They stand as timeless fragments of life, moments of intimacy, exploring the tension between idealism and existential realities.

The complexity of Matthieu Charneau’s work is as much about the cycle of creation, destruction and regeneration as it is about continuity and cosmic redundancy.

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Matthieu Charneau was born in Châteauroux, France, in 1988. He moved to Paris where he studied at the prestigious European Acting School, Cours Florent. A string of successful short-films led to collaborations with artists such as Pierre and Gilles, Frank Ocean, Ricardo Gomes, and Laurent Humbert.

In 2015, he joined Lee Jones, Stephen Moyer and Katey Sagal in Kurt Sutter's “The Bastard Executioner” and in 2016, he starred in “Les Nouvelles Folies Francaises”, directed by Thomas Blanchard. In May 2017, Carlos Conceição’s “Bad Bunny”, which features Charneau in a leading role, premiered at the 70th Cannes Films Festival. The film was selected at the 40th Clermont Ferrand International Short Film Festival in 2018, and in New York at the 48th edition of New Directors/New Films at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA. In 2017, Matthieu also worked with British-Nigerian director Joseph a. Adesunloye on “Faces”, a multi-narrative feature film set in London. The film stars Charneau in the leading role and won the Best LGBTQ Feature Film Award at the International Durban Film Festival in 2018. In 2020 he reunited with Portuguese Director Carlos Conceição for the leading role in “Um Fio De Baba Escarlate / Name Above Title”. Throughout his work as an actor, Charneau experimented with his passion for film-making, shooting, and directing short films. His performance art is influenced by his work as an actor, while his film-making influences his photographic work. He is based in New York City.