Artist talk

Artist talk on Saturday, November 29th, at 3pm

With Isabelle Giovacchini and Magali Nachtergael, art critic and curator
Free shuttle from Paris (booking required, see below)

Plongées, fragments, répliques, on view until December 21st, 2025

Plongées, fragments, répliques is Isabelle Giovacchini’s first solo show in an art centre and the fruit of a long period of investigation, manipulation and experimentation. Giovacchini explored image collections and collected found images, transforming these images to reveal new, previously invisible layers of meaning.

If historical images are the most common raw materials in her body of work, Giovacchini should not be seen as a researcher. Indeed, her approach is more a pastiche of archaeological explorations, one that provides a new take on the supposed historical veracity of archival documents. By meticulously selecting, scanning, cropping and reframing images, as well as creating both replicas and fakes, she redirects our gaze, revealing hidden details that give rise to fresh possibilities for our imagination to explore.

Far from fixing her attention on the subject, Giovacchini sets out to reveal the defects present in the reference image, focussing on its materiality and rugosity. For her, the scratches on the surface of a daguerreotype (Les Métamorphoses) or the reflection of a lamp used to illuminate an image (Études d’un culte) are chance accidents that must be put in the spotlight, as if to disrupt any dreams of glory conveyed by the official narrative. 

The exhibition presents an inventory of the artist’s most recent researches. It is accompanied by a publication entitled Nemi, about her work around Lake Nemi near Rome, a place where stories from antiquity and present-day narratives come together.

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For many years, Isabelle Giovacchini has been conducting experimental and empirical work with photography. She borrows the lexical field of this medium (imprint, fragment, double, spectrum) to divert it from its purely figurative and representative functions.

Her works are derived from objects and photographs found over time, in the archives and places she explores. By manipulating them in her studio or laboratory, she attempts to find the boundary point that lies just before their image disappears.

She has notably exhibited at Frac Sud (2007), Occitanie-Montpellier (2008 and 2022), at the Espace de l’Art Concret (Mouans-Sartoux, 2013), at Mamac (2013 and 2015, Nice), at the CCC (2013, Tours) at the CPIF (2015 and 2020), as well as in galleries: Xippas (2010), Isabelle Gounod (2011), Espace à vendre (2012), Les Filles du Calvaire (2013), In situ (2014 and 2020).

Academic and art critic, Magali Nachtergael is also an exhibition curator (Frac Aquitaine, Image/imatge, Seoul Museum of Art). Winner of the curatorial grant from the Rencontres photographiques d'Arles for the exhibition Cartes postales, nouvelles d'un monde rêvé (2019, with Anne Reverseau), in 2022-23, she was a researcher in residence at the National Museum of the History of Immigration and a member of the "photographie image animée" commission of the Cnap from 2022 to 2024.

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Helpful information

Saturday November 29th from 3 pm 
Free shuttle from Paris (Place de la Bastille). Departure at 2:15pm
Reservation required.
+33 (0)1 70 05 49 79 / contact@cpif.net

Credits : Isabelle Giovacchini, Les Métamorphoses, 2023-2024 © Isabelle Giovacchini / CPIF, Adagp, Paris, 2025