Passage by Etienne Rougery Herbault : Sterling Mirages by Mael Heinz

Dear Shaded Viewers,

2025 seems so slow after the end of the 100th year anniversary exhibition of Surrealism that was held in Centre Pompidou. However in those dark and cold days, some artists still make us wonder. Etienne is one of those with his latest Parisian exhibition : Passage that was held at 78 rue du temple. A powerful exhibition where he took us through dream, timeless symbolic and enchantment that each of us can reconnect with. Just as the irreverent gang that shook up Paris a century ago, Etienne disrupts our perception with few means.

Etienne Rougery Herbault is a chilling man, always eager to explain his projects that are a complete experience. His signature works are magic yet created with daily objects. Since 2020, he started the séries “Enigma of time” pictures on the wild Normandy Beach of Sainte Marguerite. It is daily objects, just as he sees them in his dreams : sharp and powerful. Thoses objects are chairs, curtains and stone. They are realistic with their argentic print and defined light. This realism is filled with Joy because Etienne has been trained with JR. One of the key moments of his career was when he directed photography during the shooting of Faces Places, the movie he co-directed with Agnès Varda, the historical nouvelle vague director. Etienne vividly recalls her eagerness, her curiosity and her bursting energy at almost 90 while they were driving into France’s countryside. Her attitude impressed him and never left him while creating.

The main piece of the exhibition is the ladder, a symbolic object of growth in biblical texts. But more simply, an elongated tool that draws ones attention immediately into the ensemble of horizontal shoots. He immersed it in the Mediterranean sea and took several pictures at every moment of the day. This series has been launched at Chateau La Coste in December 2021, his first artistic exhibition after a first life in his career where he did documentary shoots.

Here, Etienne rejuvenated his surrealistic descent. By keeping the same angle, he made us more attentive to the mysteries of nature. Who would have noticed that there could be mist on Mediterranean at midday ? The authentic ladder was displayed in the center of the room, bright and triumphant, even with its rusty base. Having done this exhibition in a marvellous Mediterranean place shows that a hypnotic power comes from his work, such as the Mathematical Work 012 of Hiroshi Sugimoto

In that new exhibition, the ladder was back but in the desert of Morocco. « A place where you don’t know where you go and you forgot where you came from » he explains. Reel objects are with us, starting with a rock levitating above our heads. Then we pass an oval wall, with the key piece of the show: The ladder. It is surrounded with a Picture covering the wall by Atelier Image Collée and dipped in the sand. The ambiguity is unsettling and reassuring, just like in the in situ pictures. That new series is galvanising, putting us into a trace where our eyes are coming back and forth towards the object reflecting the color of the land. Besides, Etienne slightly changed the shooting angle, which creates an intriguing path. He finished the exhibition with a shoot of the plain land, making us realise that even when they are still, the objects are as vivid as us, humans who use them. Thanks to Atelier Boba, the workshop used its craftsmanship to continue the original enchantement. They had to chose the ink and the paper that will reveal the richness of textures and the dolmen colours of the landscape on the paper.

During the installation of the exhibition, His brother told him a quote from Plato: «Time is the moving Picture of eternity ». His other sculptures illustrate those sensations. Because they are not defined objects illustrating a math or a historical fact,they are samples, fragile simple shapes that are beacons rooted in our subconscious. In front of the real ladder, we are in a room with gauze curtains where a spider perpetually turns. Even if we think about Inception when Leo DiCaprio uses the spin to check if he’s dreaming or if it evokes the dreidel game that jewish plays during Hanukkah, the most important is that it’s a suspended moment of Joy. A final surprise was held in a room upstairs, as a good nod to the Truman Show. Etienne conceived a black sand sculpture where grains falls and gets back up, with designer Bastien Mairet.

With the true eagearness, to learn and discover new personalities, his wall of special thanks is the proof that he created a warm setting where everybody could liberate their feelings and creativity. For him, friends, artists, living or deceased always give brightness to one another. The late David Lynch could have done one of his hilarious weather reports in the room. The week of exhibition was concluded by a concert of his spouse, the composer Yasmine Meddour. She performed songs in berber dialect with her evanescent music as clear as the late Ryiuchi Sakamoto. We will definitely follow his new adventures and will be there for the next travel of the ladder. Etienne has not finished to gather us to create wonder into universal items.