Jean-Luc Moulène

It rains, Paris, 1st July 2000

It rains, Paris, 1st July 2000, which could be the refrain of a song, is the title of a photograph of a minimal moment, the vision of a Parisian pedestrian, a cut flower lying on the pavement covered in rain drops. Is this moment captured by chance or a mise en scène? There is a sort of hiatus in the image; the planes – motif and background – connect nature in full bloom, pure, fragile, ephemeral with the grey weighty tarmac. The calm of the raindrops in It rains, Paris, 1st July 2000 contrasts with the gushing in La Fontaine des Amoureux, Paris, 3 avril 2006. Contrary to Nœud coulant (also in the Kadist collection) that opens up possibilities for thought and research, the elements of this photograph are organized like a rhizome. The raindrops and the flower petals form a network of points which the spectator can mentally link and recompose. On one hand tightly knit, dispersed on the other. The motif tends to fuse with the background to create one unique plane. The image generally tends towards a certain flatness, rather like medieval tapestries in the Mille fleurs style or in fabrics with flowery prints. In the recent “Fleurs” series (2008), the artist photographed wild flowers, placing them in front of colored backgrounds that extract them from their natural pastoral setting.