Agnès Geoffray

The work of Agnès Geoffray balances between reality and fiction, between everyday and unthinkable situations. Her photographs, installations and videos combine the unknown with the terrifying, like in popular fairy tales. A fascination with the visible and invisible traces of disorder, or even disaster, in everyday situations and events underlies her texts, photographs, videos and slide shows. In almost entirely white photographs, gruesome compositions inspired by media images, or compositions we are familiar with from the traditional iconography, evade the public’s eye. She appropriates images and scenes from a collective memory and wants to draw attention to the real meaning of events that are evoked by words and images. (Eva Wittocx, Art center STUK, Leuven, Belgium)

Agnès Geoffray graduated from the schools of fine arts in Lyon and Paris. She was in residencie at Rijksakademie in Amsterdam (2002-2003) and at the Villa Medici in Rome (Académie de France, 2010-2011). She has held solo exhibitions at the Rencontres d’Arles, Frac Auvergne, Iselp Bruxelles, Le Point du Jour, and the Centre Photographique d’Île-de-France, among others, and has taken part in group shows at institutions such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Jeu de Paume, and MAC VAL. She has also exhibited internationally, notably at Bozar in Bruxelles, the Kunsthalle in Vienna, the Kunsthaus in Zurich, Witte de With in Rotterdam, the Centre de la photographie in Geneva, and the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne.

Her works are part of many public and private collections such as Pompidou Center, CNAP, MAC VAL, FRAC Auvergne, Frac Nouvelle-Aquitaine MÉCA, FRAC Poitou-Charente, Elysee Museum, Antoine de Galbert Foundation, Collection Neuflize OBC... Four books about her work have been published by Editions de La Lettre Volée (Ultieme Hallucinatie, Profond silence, Les Captives and Before the eye lid’s laid), and one book, they stray they persist they thunder, was published by Éditions Textuel in Paris for the Rencontres d'Arles.