Photographic series with installation: acrylic “lenses”, inkjet prints from 35mm slides on aluminium mount, wood.
Rooted in conceptual photography, analog technologies and Light and Space, this series, Through the Walls of Gold, asks us to reconsider the workings of visual perception and how it shapes our surrounding existence. By complicating what is seen, Briard constructs dreamlike landscapes that transcend the appearance of the physical world into imaginative realms while reflecting back visual phenomenology.
Deeply affected by the unique light qualities of California’s High Desert, she has been making regular trips to this environment over the past decade. Briard forges an ethereal atmosphere that captures the area’s sublime allure, once depicted by visionaries like Agnes Pelton, a member of the Transcendental Painting Group. The open terrain’s natural, muted beauty is optically distorted and reimagined through an acidic palette and otherworldly perspective.
Her photographs are created using handmade lenses formed from discarded military prisms to deconstruct the visible spectrum into its recalibrated colors. Minimalist translucent “lenses”, referencing Larry Bell, Peter Alexander or Alex Israel, introduce an interactive experience transforming each image as the viewer moves around the gallery.
When asked to contextualize these works, the artist states “my practice uses the landscape genre as a foil through which to discuss issues in vision psychology, neuroscience and existential philosophy.”
Briard reminds us that seeing is a process that presents a version of reality rather than an accurate reproduction and that perception is constantly evolving, shaped by context and individual experience.
— Views and text from Royale Projects, Los Angeles
