Katerina Jebb

Life and Works

Katerina Jebb, born 15 November 1962 is a British-born artist, photographer and film-maker.

After studying drama at St Anne's College, in 1984 she moved to California to study photography. Her first works were photomontages which she created inside the camera, originating from repeated exposure of a single roll of film.

In 1989 Jebb moved to Paris and worked for the French newspaper Liberation.

In 1991 she was involved in a car accident which seriously injured her right arm. To resolve the resulting inability to hold a camera, Jebb began to employ machines to make life-size images, primarily self-portraits, laying herself on a high-resolution scanning machine. Subsequently, she explored a greater diversity of techniques in parallel with the expanding possibilities in digital technology. Jebb proceeded to remove parts of the scanner to facilitate maximum extension of the subject. The duration of each passage of the scanner echoed early photographic principles, being seven minutes long, therefore demanding of the sitter to lie motionless for 28 minutes.^[1]

The resulting images were considered as a new visual medium and appeared in museums and galleries, notably The Whitney Museum as part of The Warhol Look (1998), a world touring retrospective. Her early work was subsequently published in Life Magazine, The Times and Vogue.

Recent projects include works commissioned by the Musée Galliera Paris and The Festival of Autumn Paris 2012 and 2013.^[2]

Katerina Jebb is currently working on a project with the Fondation Balthus, to be presented in 2014.^[3]

She is the best friend of Australian pop star and actress Kylie Minogue.

Interviews

"I feel that Katerina Jebb desires to produce photographic works to chase away her doubts. Aided by the cold ray of light, it is the object, the clothing and sometimes even the human body that she examines in its shell, its skeleton. She turns photography into a ritual and sacred exercise in which the clothes and portraits are seen in a raw state. Her lost and rediscovered images are the absurd and drained mirrors of our worlds, of which they reveal tenderness and a sense of abandonment.^[4]
Olivier Saillard Director of le Musée Galliera Paris, 2012

Much has already been written on the relationship between death and photography, on reality and fiction, on the blurring of genres – all fundamental themes in contemporary photography and also in the work of Katerina Jebb, an English artist based in Paris. What catches the attention is the weird aesthetic conjured by her technique. Her portraits – now printed from scans, and previously from photocopies – use a method that seems to denature life and maybe even nudge it over to the other side. And on the other side, the skin is even smoother and sometimes porcelain-white in colour; forms flatten and the aura of the gaze vanishes forever – as if, precisely, the breath of life was so diminished as to be lost. The stiffness of the characters gives us no clue as to the model's position: are they levitating, or are we in the presence of recumbent funerary statues? This stiffness, and the sumptuous dresses, also call to mind the saints carried through southern European streets during religious processions. The sacred has a part to play, too. Wavering, perhaps. Is this gaze – which isn’t one, really – eternity?

The moment the photograph was taken is no longer at issue. These are frozen images – as is any photograph, of course, but here the function is multiplied. Mummification or embalmingo. In 1890, Dr Variot, a Paris hospital physician, proposed a new method of embalmingo, ‘galvanic anthropoplasty’, based on the use of silver nitrate, a substance well known to the period’s photographers. Katerina Jebb plays a little game of convergence and of process exchange: in a dizzying mise en abîme of the medium’s basic principles, she shows us an image whose aesthetic comes close to this idea. The garment – the most beautiful garment, of course – is deposited. As if it were the last worn; as if it were for eternity. What is captured is thus no longer an instant of life, but the appearance thereof in all its splendour.,^[5]
Vincent Juillerat, art historian, 2008

Images and techniques

Jebb is known for her unconventional approach to image creation.

She works in several mediums, notably video art, installations, human scanning and photomontage.

Her signature work involves the use of domestic scanning machines and industrial-sized photocopy machines to document objects, composing multiple digital files to create an exact rendition of the original. The techniques employed produce a phantasmagoric aesthetic, often present in her work.

Jebb's recent video series, Simulacrum and Hyperbole, is a work of satire featuring Kylie Minogue, Tilda Swinton, Kristin Scott Thomas and Marisa Berenson. In this work, Jebb parodies contemporary consumerist practice in advertising. The series is presented on Jebb's imaginary TV channel, Lucid TV.

Exhibitions

Museum exhibitions/Group exhibitions

Metropolitan Art Museum Tokyo April 2014, Inventory of Balthus
Fondation Balthus,2014^[6]^[7]
Musée Galliera, Beaux -Arts de Paris, Eternity Dress 2014,^[8]
Palais de Tokyo, Festival d'Automne Paris 2012, The Impossible Wardrobe^[9]
Momu Mussée d'Anvers 2012
Musée Réattu, Arles, Acte V, 2012^[10]
Centre Pompidou, Paris, You Can Find Beautiful Things Without Consciousness, Asvoff Festival, 2011^[11]
Museum Of The Moving Image, New York, Opening Title Sequence, Birds Of Paradise, 2011
Musee Bourdelle, Paris, Madame Gres, La Couture A L’oeuvre, Life Size Composite Scans, 2011,^[12]
National Museum, Kulturforum, Berlin, Film Projection & Human Photocopy Tryptychs, 2011^[13]
Musée Réattu, Arles, France,"Still and Living Objects and Women", video projection "Unidentified N°35" (2008)^[14]
Musée Réattu, Arles, France, "Chambre d'Echo", (2009)
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, "Kylie, the exhibition", (2007)
Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, "Avantgarderobe, Kunst und Mode im 20. Jahrhundert" (1999)
The Whitney Museum, New York, "The Warhol look: glamour, style and fashion” (1998), 2-year touring exhibition:
Musée de la Mode, Marseille (1998)
Musée des Beaux Arts, Ontario (1998)
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (1998)
The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburg (1998)

Gallery exhibitions/Group shows

Librarie Mazarine Paris 2013, Le Tablier de Balthus^[15]
FIAC 2013 Hôtel de Miramion Paris, Spot – Balice Hertling in collaboration with Nilufar and Giò Marconi Gallery^[16]
Art Paris Grand Palais, Analix Gallery Geneva, 2012^[17]
Vara Fine Arts VPL, New York, Second Skin, 2012,^[18]
La Chapelle Balthus La Rossiniere, Switzerland, Le Tablier De Balthus, Documentary Film & Life Size Composite Scans, 2011^[19]
Trading Museum Comme Des Garcons, Paris, Simulacrum & Hyperbole, Video Installation, 2011
British Film Institute Southbank, Birds Eye View Film Festival 2011, Simulacrum & Hyperbole, 2011
Gloria Maria Gallery, Milan "Simulacrum & Hyperbole", (2010)
Brachfeld Gallery Paris, In the Realm of the Senses, (2010)
The Barbican Centre, The Curve Gallery, London, video installation for Acne (2009)
Contemporary Art Space of Dudelange, Luxembourg, "Faire Peau de l'Inconscient" (2009)^[20]
Dopolavoro Gallery, Milan, “A Candid Look at the Anatomical Fascination of VPL”(2009)
Gallery of Art Conseil General, Aix en Provence, video installation and still lives (2009)
Palais de l'Archeveque, Rencontres d'Arles, France "Untitled Icons 1–8" (2008)
Le Laboratoire, Paris "On Capturing a Cloud", video installation (2008)
Dover Street market, London "Comme des Garçons", mixed media installations (2008)^[21]
“Comme des Garçons", Japan, human photocopy installation (2007)
Givenchy, Paris, "Unidentified N°35", video projection and large scale human photocopy (2007)
Givenchy, Madison Avenue, New York, "Art meets fashion" (2006)
Anne Faggionato Gallery, London, "Psycho, Art and Anatomy", Autoportrait Oral and Real Doll, (2000)^[22]
The Hayward Gallery, Southbank, London, “Addressing the Century, 100 years of Art and Fashion” (1999)
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth (1998)
RMIT Gallery, The Melbourne Festival, "Hype Fashion, Art and Advertising" (1999)
CCAC Gallery, San Francisco, "Fast Forward", video and installation, collaboration with "Comme des Garçons" (1998)
Kunstlerhaus Gallery, Vienna, "Fast Forward", video and installation, collaboration with "Comme des Garçons" (1998)

Permanent Collections

Musée des Arts Décoratifs du Louvre, Paris, France
Musée Réattu,^[23] Arles, France
Musée Galliera, Paris

Publications

Musée Galliera, Paris Haute Couture, Olivier Saillard et Anne Zazzo, (éditions Skira Flammarion, Sophie Laporte, 2012),^[24]^[25]
Acne Paper, interview Professor Van der Kemp, 2012
Purple magazine interview Olivier Zahm, 2013 ^[26]

Film festivals

Barbican, BFI Southbank, Tate Modern, London, Fashion in Film Festival, "Birds of Paradise", 2010
ICA Gallery, London, "Birds Eye View Festival", film projection (2009)

Television

Canal+, France, "Essay on failure Malcolm McClaren" (2001)
Channel 4, London, "Illuminations, zoom", films by fashion photographers (1999)^[27]

References

Representation

Gloria Maria Gallery http://gloriamariagallery.com/
Première Heure Paris / Psycho http://www.premiere-heure.fr/news
Rebecca McCubbin at Art Department New York