, - . (alias ponctuation)

About

The exhibition “, - .” (also known as "punctuation") draws on the philosophy of a science fiction novel by American writer Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five or the Children's Crusade, published in 1969. In this book, the author uses nonlinear storytelling to explore the idea that life, like the book, can be seen as a collection of moments rather than a linear sequence of events: “There isn't any particular relationship between all the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.”

Armando Milano and Felicitas Yang create pairs of empathic photographs in which colors and forms interact and resonate with each other. The dialogue between the photographers’ points of view, is reminiscent of a romantic meeting. Their worlds intersect, blend, and form unexpected photographic correspondences. Together, they have created 88 photographs, arranged into 44 diptychs, and this harmonious collaboration is now on display, accompanied by a book they crafted themselves, printed in a limited edition of 120 copies.

One might enjoy trying to guess the author of each photograph. Was it Armando Milano who chose to capture these resting marble feet, between which a scorpion emerges? And was their echo, a delicate and fleeting trace in the sand, photographed by Felicitas Yang? Or was it the other way around? Who initiates, and who responds?

We have a staged composition of young football players captured in the Arènes de Lutèce—the first arenas in Paris, which hosted both theater performances and gladiator battles. Here, the present transports us to a distant time. Set against a sandy backdrop, the vibrant colors answer to a more abstract photograph featuring potted plants in front of a wall, accompanied by a small red tricycle. These elements create visual connections through the colors, the elongated shapes, inviting us to ponder their meaning—could this be the home of one of these young football players?

The photographs become a game, like dominoes, where one form responds to another, forming a thread that connects the pairs of images and weaves itself through the entire series. The artists themselves describe this idea in their introductory text: “This visual game can be compared to a method called Dorica Castra. Dorica Castra (latin for "Greek camps") is a stylistic figure, in which the next word borrows the previous word’s last syllable - in this case "dori-CA" - to start the following word "CA-stra". Applying this stylistic figure visually (as opposed to in writing), meant that the photos needed to act like links in a chain. In other words, there's a direct dialogue between the photos, creating a narrative thread, which highlights similitudes and allusions, often with humor, to find meaning and beauty in the subtleties of life.”

Armando Milano and Felicitas Yang’s photos reflect on our activities and cultural habits. Some make us smile, such as the diptych where the spectators in a stadium react to a solitary foosball table firmly anchored to the ground. Another pairing shows the back of a young woman superimposed on Claude Monet’s Water Lilies, while the opposing image is of another woman, submerged in what could be described as a lake of paint.

It is a dance between magnified reality, Roland Barthes' punctum, and the concept of eternity —“eternity and a day,” reminiscent of Theo Angelopoulos's film. Both cinematography and photography emerged in the same century; cinema is the succession of 24 photographs per second and we can discover, amongst the black-and-white photographs of the artists, the enchantment that the magician Georges Méliès created when he brought to life cinematography: in the very beginning, there were merely shadows moving behind a curtain. The photograph of children seen from behind as they observe a terrarium is paired with an image where individuals are visible through a pane of glass. This takes us back to the time of the first silhouettes moving behind a screen; it’s a story within a story in which the photographed figures are observing, the artists captured this moment, and today we are observing these same images.

Armando Milano and Felicitas Yang weave visual poems that anyone can engage with and create their own correlations to allow for their inner journeys to unfold.

Original text in French by Laurent Quénéhen