Dominique Païni's 'Le Cinéma, un art plastique' Explores Film as Visual Art

Dominique Païni's publication 'Le Cinéma, un art plastique,' released by Yellow Now, frames cinema as a plastic art, echoing Henri Langlois's term for silent film. The book compiles Païni's writings from the 1990s to 2014, examining cinema's visual force through diverse themes and motifs. As a spectator, Païni reflects on viewing conditions and optical events, delving into details like metamorphosis from Ovid to Jacques Tourneur or Abbas Kiarostami's carpet effects. He connects film to visual arts, noting Michelangelo Antonioni's painterly approach and Alfred Hitchcock's transparency techniques. Wang Bing's traveling shots are highlighted for their plastic experience. Païni's curatorial and programming practices inform his texts, treating them as exhibition layouts or reflections on past shows. His mobile spectator perspective seeks to renew cinematic viewpoints by exploring plastic experiments that transform and expand the medium. The work was reviewed in artpress issue 408 in February 2014.