Tohé Commaret is a videographer and his brother, Grichka, is a painter. They grew up in Vitry-sur-Seine, in the Robespierre neighbourhood — a so-called “priority zone” — memories of which continue to fuel their imaginations and the work that they have begun as artists. This exhibition, which brings them together for the first time, also takes a film that they co-directed as its starting point. This project thus successfully brings together their two languages and shared past.
In his hybrid body of work, where reality and fiction intersect, Tohé Commaret explores the sensorial possibilities of the cinematographic medium, from cell phone to film reel, natural settings to artificial stagings, everyday life to hallucinatory scenes.
Generally scriptless, in order to foster co-authorship and improvisation, his films capture what the protagonists wish to reveal about their inner lives, so that the form can better reflect the subject matter. The artists reveal stories that we tell ourselves to mask a painful reality — the identities that we impose on ourselves and the ways in which we extricate ourselves from their shackles.
Grichka Commaret
Behind the hallway door of a building, mirages appear like signs charged with memories connecting Commaret to the neighbourhood he grew up in. Between the paintings, spaces that we traverse are diluted by an apparent calm. A draught draws our eye towards little windows, where the life of a city seems to contract into a complex knot. His work has been the subject of several exhibitions in France, Germany and Switzerland.