Marianne Muller
I spent my childhood with a mother-in-law journalist at the time that the information was mainly broadcast on paper. I have seen a lot of the work of my mother, but also the work of the photographers who accompanied her on a report, the way in which editorial decisions and the stress of the closures took place. At that time the newspapers, magazines and catalogues that I had easily accessed were fascinating materials for the child I was because they allowed access to a form of knowledge of the adult world through their imagery. I was fascinated very young by these images made popular by the important diffusion that their media allowed.
The arrival of the internet accompanied me in my passage to adulthood. The way in which it revolutionized the mode of diffusion of images also marked my artistic journey.
Like all my generation, I was fascinated by the exponential growth of my research fields, which was simulated by the mass of iconographic material to which I accessed and by the incessant flow of images to which I was subjected during my wanderings on the internet.
From 2005, I decided to order my navigations on the internet. So I started collections of images looking to classify the iconographic mass that appeared before me. Sharing images between them was a way to restore measurement and meaning to the flow of images that I was subjected to incessantly, whether in public space or on the internet.
This work is to identify similarities, but also to design networks that link images to each other, to architecture ecosystems – "echosystems" – by which they reveal each other. I try to capture the images on which I work from the environments I invent them.
In concrete terms, I work with a “image mur”. My image collections are printed in thumbnail format and then hung on the wall, organized in constellations according to shapes, materials and colors. The wall is constantly evolving. It develops through visual analogies, emotions and sensations that the images speak to me.
From these rankings are born image pairs. I identify formal similarities, I track narrative and symbolic echoes between the photos.
Marianne Muller works from images that she finds in public or private archives, from photographers, news agencies or internet image banks.
Its practice is to connect them by emitted formal similarities and thus create unexpected associations that generate new, hybrid meanings.
Her work has been shown in numerous collective exhibitions, in places like the gallery 22,48m2 (Romainville), the gallery White Project (Paris), the Salon de Montrouge, the Centre Photographique de Marseille, Place-commun (Toulouse) and the Shop-CNAC (Grenoble) where she receives the Prix Edouard Barbe.
Its projects are supported by institutions such as CNC or DRAC Ile-de-France.
It also carries out many workshops for places such as LE BAL or MAC/VAL and several-handed works of art with different audiences (hospitals, schools and stopping houses).