Arc-en-Ciel 0xD81EFD44 (2022) | Print on Dibond (60x90cm) #5/5 ー [click to view image] ー
ー Dialogues on abstract art ー Hors les Murs ]RN structure[
This July 5, 2025 should have been the opening of ]RN structure[‘s Hors les Murs exhibition at the “Espaço Cultural Niterói”, in the sumptuous Palácio dos Correios overlooking the Bay of Rio de Janeiro.
Unfortunately, due to administrative complications beyond even the most sincere motivations, this project had to be cancelled, despite the enthusiasm, perseverance and tenacity deployed to bring such a wonderful and prestigious exhibition to fruition.
When the wheels of bureaucracy fail to vibrate in unison with the noble idea that art knows no borders, we reach what I would call a form of state sclerosis.
We should have been 51 New Realities visual artists exhibiting from July 5 to August 16, 2025 in Brazil, in front of Christ the Redeemer, around the inspiring theme: “Dialogues on abstract art”. But it was not to be.
However, I’m happy to share with you the two photographic works I had prepared for this exhibition, which also failed to cross borders.
They have now joined the Artmajeur gallery, and I invite you to discover them in detail by clicking on each image. Artmajeur gallery | Éric Petr
I wish you a wonderful summer or winter for those of you in the southern hemisphere.
Abstract Angel 0x3866AD02 (2024) | Print on Dibond (23x15cm) #1/5 ー [click to view image] ー
Espaço Cultural Correios Niterói
Located in the heart of Niterói, overlooking the bay of Rio de Janeiro, the Espace Culturel Correios is one of the most emblematic venues on the Brazilian art scene.
Dedicated to the promotion of contemporary creation, this space actively supports emerging and established artists, both local and international. It is part of a dynamic of openness, intercultural dialogue and the dissemination of visual arts in all their forms.
By hosting ambitious exhibitions, residencies and off-site projects, the Centro Cultural dos Correios affirms its commitment to a lively, accessible and forward-looking culture.
I’m not a photographer specializing in URBEX (Urban Exploration), but I can be drawn to certain sites where I feel an extraordinary energy, which in this case compels me to record it and visually extract its trace, memory or presence.
I’m going to present two photographic narratives, one of which was taken at the bottom of the island of Koh Chang in Thailand, and the other on Hashima, an island off Nagasaki in Japan.
Koh Chang, Elephant Island and its Ghost Boat
This is a site invested by a local billionaire to create a highly original hotel complex, but built on a site that is sacred to the Thais.
In Thailand, many places are considered sacred: ancient cemeteries, sites of worship… Yet some have been redeveloped for real estate projects, such as Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport. However, the most prestigious Buddhist monks and priests generally take care to purify these places before any construction takes place.
In a way, it’s a request for permission from the deities to avoid offense.
Of course, if you don’t believe this nonsense, I recommend you stop reading immediately, or you’ll be wasting your precious time.
But the site I’m talking about wasn’t purified by the monks. So it became cursed, and a spell was cast.
We went there, however, and although we prayed at the Buddha altar on site, my wife, who was the investigator of this unusual epic, had an accident the very next day, and was deprived of the use of both her arms from the start of our stay. Rest assured, it was only for 6 weeks.
But the story doesn’t end there. We were accompanied by a couple of friends, and they too were injured a few days later: one in the knee, the other in the back.
Many would say it’s just a coincidence. Personally, I don’t believe in chance or bad luck. Life is much more complex than that.
Whatever the case, this place is imbued with a very special vibration that everyone can feel. And even if you’re standing by the beach, under the coconut palms, a strange, almost indescribable energy grips you and makes you dizzy.
To read the rest of the story and see the photographs, click here ….
Gunkanjima: The Warship and the Ghost Island of Hashima
Hashima is an island near Nagasaki, more commonly known as Gunkanjima, because of the shape it evokes: that of a warship. “Gunkan” means “warship”, and “Shima” or “Jima” refers to an island.
The island was a mining site from the end of the 19th century until the 1970s.
As mining operations expanded, more and more workers settled on the island—first the miners themselves, then their families, and later various professionals essential to maintaining the site. By the 1950s, Hashima had become a densely populated city, reaching an astonishing 85,000 inhabitants per square kilometer!
Now abandoned for almost 50 years, exposed to the dreaded weather of the East China Sea and frequent, merciless typhoons, the island has allowed itself to be overrun by nature.
Recently classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the mining town is no longer accessible for security reasons, but visits are still possible in small groups in certain authorized parts of the island.
To read the rest of the story about Hashima Island and see the photographs, click here ….
I was a passionate film photographer from 1983 to 1993. I developed my films and printed my photographs in a photo lab I borrowed from the Paris Airport. Then I suddenly stopped photography. At that precise moment in its history, I undoubtedly felt that an earthquake had occurred, and that I no longer had a place in it. The digital world was emerging.
And so went the years without taking a single photograph and without touching a camera in the decade that followed. When I look at my photo albums, I see a gaping hole of a decade’s worth of unprinted memories, some of which have disappeared into the depths of my subconscious. The first lesson I learned from this deprivation of images is that photography, drawing and travel journals, beyond their beauty, are first and foremost an indispensable and necessary tool for memory.
But I had to step back from my obsessive and sickly relationship with the camera, and the ten years I’d been away from it made me aware of this, and gave me the distance I needed to reflect freely and without constraint on the power of the image, its role, its power, and above all, the way in which the photographic image could touch on the immaterial, the metaphysical, and express unspeakable emotions of the spiritual or invisible order.
And so it was that this decade of gestation, which was accompanied by an intense practice of uncompromising Aikidō, changed my view of the world, or rather, brought to it an acuity that until then had met with some difficulty in expressing itself clearly within me.
It’s also undeniable that Aikidō, in its pure practice, traditional approach, intensive training and regular meditation, provides access to a wider field of spiritual knowledge and our relationship with the universe. This is how Aikidō has helped me so much and continues to bring me this depth in the conception of my photography.
I would like to express my gratitude to Armand Mamy-Rahaga and Michel Kovaleff who, through their practice of a fair and uncompromising martial art, have helped me to find a path in my reflection, and to resume my photographic work with the strength that Aiki gives us.
So in December 2002, after a ten-year hiatus, I took up photography again, where I had left off in 1993, but with a more structured coherence than my work of the 80s had produced.
It was a chance encounter with a 12-exposure disposable Pocket Instamatic Kodak, initiated by a trip from Thailand to Cambodia. Twelve great moments of emotion! Just twelve photos taken during a trip to the ends of the earth is like holding your breath until the end. On this trip, I learned to take my time, to search my subconscious for the triggering breath of the photographic click, the pleasure of the release. I realized that photography is, above all, about listening to our universe.
The first photographic works I produced from 2003 onwards (Tōkyō under the rain_2oo3, Bangkok_2oo4, TrAveRséE2nUiT_2oo4, Windows_2oo5, and others), constitute the foundations and underpinnings of a knowledge acquired during this decade of interruption in photographic practice.
The three images I’m presenting today from 2005 are highly representative of my style. My photography not only uses light as the primary constituent of the work, but is also distinguished by its ability to capture the subtlest details of a scene or place, transforming visible objects and magnifying their secret perception. Through this gaze, each image becomes a kind of visual poem, where the invisible takes shape, and the viewer is invited to discover a world all his or her own, while remaining connected to the universal human experience.
These images from my Hong Kong by night series, taken in February 2005, attempt to reproduce the ineffable atmosphere of Asian cities, bringing with them what will become my signature as a photographer, that aspect of dense, poetic luminous matter, that dreamlike atmosphere and that feeling of timelessness. Although these images were taken twenty years ago, their power makes us forget the poor quality of the digital camera used at the time, which remains a feat.
My photographic work will continue uninterrupted within the framework of this reflection on light, movement, space and time. I have named this photographic process to define it: “in situ kinetic photography” or “photographie cinétique in situ”.
This work continues today with my Variations de Lumière but also, and always, with 光 (Hikari), Métamorphoses or my Spirituelles Odyssées which gave rise to the publication of a numbered and signed book in 2016, by Corridor Éléphant, Éditeur de photographies contemporaines.
This work on light and movement, which I began to disseminate on social networks in 2010, remained largely unknown to photographers and the general public. My numerous publications gave way, little by little, to a photographic trend that other photographers, in turn, took up and developed on their own, then named in the years 2015 “Intentional Camera Movement”.
I’m happy to be one of the very first investigators of this photographic movement, and to name but a few who preceded me, Kōtarō Tanaka (1905-1995), Ernst Haas (1921-1986), and also my contemporary Alexey Titarenko (b. 1962), who for his part worked specifically on crowds in motion.
I personally see myself as a photographer who has concentrated all my work and efforts over the course of my life on this principal reflection of the moving image, creating a totally unique style.
About the G-Lake Art Gallery at the Guihu Museum of Art・桂湖美术馆
The Guihu Art Museum is located in Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province. It is committed to exploring the connotation of local Fujian culture in depth, and to presenting various academic research and artistic practices in a variety of exhibition formats. In addition to the exhibition, the Guihu Art Museum will also organize various special lectures, salons, workshops and literary fashion activities, and is equipped with independent libraries, public classrooms and cafés.
The art museum has long supported Fujian’s new generation of artists and cooperated closely with local art lovers and cultural and rural groups. It has also regularly invited art groups, artists, curators, designers and writers from outside Fujian province and around the world to make resident creations in Fujian. At the same time, the art gallery will also actively promote cultural exchange across the Strait.
Images and architectural presentation of the Guihu Art Museum
VARIATIONS DE LUMIÈRE OPUS 5 Photographic triptych 2021 (33x150cm) Copy #2/3 (+1 EA)
This opus is a continuation of a reflection on the essence of light and its effect on the perception of Being in its immediate or cosmic environment.
Light fascinates me by the duality of its state, at once corpuscular and undulatory, but also for everything that makes it our perception of the world.
My ” Variations de Lumière “, arranged by opus, present images born of my observation of light, revealing the gap in perception between the photographed reality and the photographic record.
It’s a metaphor, but I’d say that the medium of photography is particularly well-suited to this study, because the photons that strike my negative, materialized by impact points on the emulsion layer of silver halide crystals, or on the low-pass filter of a sensor, describe the corpuscular nature of light during the shooting phase.
Similarly, this material, used as a material, underlines the wave-like nature of light, when these impacts on the negative become oscillations on the paper.
From this observation of photons recorded at a moment ” T ” in their infinite course through the cosmos, at a precise point in the universe, comes this writing of light.
Variations of Light opus 7 | Quantum entanglement (2024) detail [Click to enlarge image]
This work is the fruit of a reflection developed for a project of three exhibitions (2024〜2025) by UNESCO’s CNFAP [Conseil National Français des Arts Plastiques] as part of its “Dialogues” program, conducted in close collaboration with the CIAE [Center for research on art and the environment] of the UPV [Polytechnic University of Valencia] , two entities dedicated to the creation and dissemination of the visual arts.
” AVANT LA LETTRE ” is the title of the theme of this interdisciplinary exhibition, which expresses the concept of the project.
「 We want to take the lead on something that’s not yet defined. The point is to establish a relationship between what is written and its visual representation. In the same way that the avant-garde introduced words and typography as plastic elements in artistic work. With this intention, we will link this project with that one: “Artistic narrative as integral to a message. Connections between contemporary artists who use words”. The theme of this exhibition implies the use of words and letters in the work, as carriers of a conceptual or visual message, or as a plastic element in itself, in order to convey a message “avant la lettre”. 」 Curator
THE PROJECT
The artist will create two original works.
・Artwork n°1 : Visual or conceptual representation of a word that may or may not appear written in the work. This will be a free-format work, inspired by the proposed theme, ranging in size from 20 to 120 cm high and 20 to 70 cm wide. Depending on the exhibition space, this work will be exhibited alongside the second or placed separately. The two works should form a coherent whole.
・Work #2: Visual or conceptual representation of a letter. This second work is in the imposed A5 format in the horizontal direction, whose image could be smaller in size or occupy the entire surface of the paper. The support will always be flexible, as for the first work.
The first of the three exhibitions will take place at La Casa de la Cultura José Peris Aragó in the Alboraya district of Valencia (Spain) from November 15 to December 13, 2024
Variations of Light opus 7 | Quantum entanglement (2024) : Kakemono Washi Kozo 42 x 21 cm and Plexiglas A5 [Click to enlarge image]
This diptych is an interactive installation featuring a Japanese paper kakemono and printed transparent Plexiglas, which interact with each other and the viewer.
These two objects can be placed one on top of the other, next to each other, or separately in space.
Entanglement is the title of this opus 7, and in quantum mechanics means, and I quote: ” Entanglement, or quantum entanglement, is a phenomenon in which two particles form a linked system and exhibit quantum states dependent on each other, regardless of the distance separating them. “
Variations of Light opus 7 [Click to enlarge image]
Variations of Light opus 7 [Click to enlarge image]
The space between the two components of the work is the energy they emit between them, as if we had on one side the energy of the word, the signifier and the meaning, and on the other the energy of the letter, which in its uniqueness takes on another meaning that echoes that of the word.
In this installation, the letter “O” sits perfectly at the center of the word “HEART”, but also anywhere in the space. It’s the viewer who, by simply moving the Plexiglas, will feel the energy change as the two components move apart.
In this installation, polysemy adds an unexpected depth to the meaning of the signifier and, by analogy, also expresses the “CHORUS”, i.e. the architectural heart of a place of belief, where the ” BEING”, since the most ancient times, has come in search of that oneness with the cosmos.
This installation also shows that thought, before it expresses itself in letters and words, is also a form of light writing, a primary but not primitive form of writing.
「 Éric PETR, born in the 60s, worked in the 80s, and later, in the early 2000s, on the image set in motion with an artistic intention using a camera.
This technique was named several years later “Intentional Camera Movement”, taken up by the hashtags #icm or #icmphotography and is today widely taken up by many talented young photographers.
Following the dynamics of several photographers and visual artists who preceded him, such as Kōtarō Tanaka (1905-1995), Ernst Haas (1921-1986), and Alexey Titarenko (born in 1962) of his generation and a few other experimentalists, PETR in turn experimented with this artistic path mainly between 2003 and 2015. Unlike his peers, he made it the heart of his photographic work.
For about ten years, PETR has created a movement and a technique that allow him to serve his intention and his research work on light. This technique, which he calls [Insitu Kinetic Photography], is the basis of his work, and has allowed him to set up many works that he has experimented with, particularly in abstract photography or subjective abstraction photography.
PETR began his career as a professional photographer in 2013 after 20 years of photographic research. After having caught the attention of some contemporary art players, between 2011 and 2014 where he assembled a synthesis of his work on light on his Blog and Instagram, he began in 2016 to be revealed in some prestigious magazines, such as L’OEIL DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE, to be exhibited at the SALON DES RÉALITÉS NOUVELLES and to be published by Éditions CORRIDOR ÉLÉPHANT with his first monograph “SPIRITUELLES ODYSSÉES”. Since then, PETR has chained publications and exhibitions in Paris, and in the World. 」
Hello, I’m pleased to announce my participation in the “Avant la lettre” exhibition in Valencia, Spain, this autumn!
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CNFAP is delighted to invite you to the opening of the exhibition “AVANT LA LETTRE”, an exchange between France and Spain as part of its “DIALOGUES” program.
A catalog and an artist’s book were produced for the occasion.
[Exposición] BEFORE THE LETTER Nov. 15, 2024 > Dec. 13, 2024 Opening, November 15, 6:30 pm
AVANT LA LETTRE is an interdisciplinary collaborative exhibition between the CIAE [Centre de recherche sur l’art et l’environnement] of the UPV [Université polytechnique de Valence] and the CNFAP [Conseil National Français des Arts Plastiques] of UNESCO, entities dedicated to the creation and dissemination of the visual arts.
This exhibition is organized by Amparo B. Wieden and the CNFAP Commission.
The exhibition venue Casa de la Cultura José Peris Aragó Calle del Mar, 1 46120 Alboraya Valencia Spain
Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 9:00 am to 9:00 pm and Saturday, 9:00 am to 2:00 pm
“in situ kinetic photography” first principle of a manifesto
I started practicing photography in 1983, and for ten years I had this idea of developing a research and aesthetic based on light, and the impact that light can have on our mind, our thoughts, and our perception of the universe.
I resumed this work in 2003, after taking a break from photography between 1993 and 2003. Nevertheless, my reflection on the image nourished this period of inactivity, which subsequently proved very rich and constructive for my photographic work.
Ten years later, in 2003, after thinking long and hard about the image, its role and its power, I continued my photographic work on light, as plastic or matter, with a fresh eye.
“Bangkok 2oo4” and other works from the same period show a body of work that drew inspiration from this time of reflection, introspection and maturation.
In this new era of digital imaging, this style of photography was not yet precisely named, but a decade later it was, under the name ICM (Intentional Camera Movement).
In the 20th century, some photographers devoted part of their work to this technical aspect of motion photography, such as, to name but a few, Kōtarō Tanaka (1905-1995), Ernst Haas (1921-1986), and Alexey Titarenko (b. 1962), who worked specifically on moving crowds.
In the early 2000s, my work on the moving image, with the idea of painting with light on my film or sensor, is very contemporary in approach, and remains on the bangs.
My work, which is based on the principle of intentional movement, has now evolved to bring a broader field to the ICM, which I call “in situ kinetic photography”. “In situ kinetic photography” brings a wider field to the “intentional camera movement” and takes into account different axes and planes, in situ, for the same exposure that oscillates from a few seconds to a few minutes.
“In situ kinetic photography” is similar to the ultrasound of a place that is produced like a micro-film, but which is recorded on a single image. It is therefore neither multiple exposures nor post-processing work. Its photography is part of the field of abstraction, or subjective abstraction. Its writing is done with light and photons constitute its alphabet. Its language is cosmic, its style dreamlike and its aesthetic plastic. This photography is similar to painting in the sense that it is constructed on site by composing the elements that are added to the image.
The brush or pencil is the light ray that contains the matter and energy of electromagnetic waves, while the canvas or paper is the film or the camera sensor. Unlike the painter or the calligrapher, it is not the brush that moves, but the support, that is to say the camera. It is also, in this sense, that the intention of “in situ kinetic photography” is in no way that of “light painting”, even if we can observe certain common points.
For this photograph, composed in situ, elements very dispersed on the site are carefully chosen to compose a photographic painting. After an analysis of the times allowing the addition of the elements to be photographed, the photographer will have to determine precisely the speed of the shutter, the aperture of the focal length, and the sensitivity of the film, according to any filters added.
For “in situ kinetic photography”, the intention is no longer movement, as in “intentional camera movement”, but that of constructing an abstract image with a plastic density that will suggest the superposition of quantum states of a geographical point that light crosses during its infinite odyssey.
Variations of Light opus 5 [click on the image to enlarge it]
I’m delighted to announce my participation in the Réalités Nouvelles Hors les Murs exhibition in Shenyang, China!
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抽象融合 – ABSTRACT CONVERGENCE
学米支持 ACADEMIC SUPPORT 奥利维尔 -迪埃-皮齐奥 OLIVIER DI PIZIO 艺未总临 ARTISTIC DIRECTOR 徐比莉 EMILY XU
策展人:甄熙 COMMISSARIAT:ZHENXI
14.09 〜 17.11.2024
法国新现实协会 艺术家群展 EXHIBITION BY ARTIST COLLECTIVE RÉALITÉS NOUVELLES – PARIS
展覧地点|SHOWROOM 沈阳市铁西区兴华北街8号 1905文化创意园1905艺术空间
Click on each image to enlarge
ABOUT MY ARTWORK
VARIATIONS DE LUMIÈRE OPUS 5 Photographic triptych 2021 (33x150cm) Copy #2/3 (+1 EA)
This opus is a continuation of a reflection on the essence of light and its effect on the perception of Being in its immediate or cosmic environment.
Light fascinates me by the duality of its state, at once corpuscular and wave-like, but also for everything that makes it our perception of the world.
My “Variations de Lumière” (Variations of Light), arranged by opus, are images born of my observation of light, revealing the gap in perception between photographed reality and the photographic record.
It is a metaphor, but I would say that the medium of photography is particularly well-suited to this study, because the photons that strike my negative, materialized by impact points on the emulsion layer of silver halide crystals, or on the low-pass filter of a sensor, describe the corpuscular nature of light during the shooting phase.
Similarly, this material, used as a material, underlines the wave-like nature of light, when these impacts on the negative become oscillations on the paper.
From this observation of photons recorded at a moment “T” in their infinite course through the cosmos, at a precise point in the universe, comes this writing of light.
In my work, light is not always the source of its presence.
It’s also a reflection on the light that leads me to construct images, which by its absence, calls out to us in our confrontation with nothingness.
It is these deep blacks that reveal her, as much as our eye can become accustomed to restoring her presence in the evanescent appearance of forms produced by our mind.
Look closely at these images. They’ll reveal their secrets. There are multiple levels of interpretation.
The photographs are taken in such a way that shapes and silhouettes seem to move under the effect of our retina. Details change too, depending on the angle of view or the focus of our eye.
Perception therefore changes, depending on how we look at it, how bright it is, how much attention or concentration we bring to it, and the state of mind we’re in when we look at the image.