Jennifer Douzenel's Poetic Video Fragments at Primo Piano

At Primo Piano in Paris, curator Emilia Stocchi presents videos by Jennifer Douzenel, a 2009 Beaux-Arts graduate. The ground-floor space is darkened to showcase Douzenel's fixed-camera works, each extracting a few dense minutes from longer takes. One piece pays homage to Michel Verjux with a static shot of a spotlight and floating dust; another shows a live bird playing with a dead one in sand. Bats cross a screen, black threads evoke railway catenaries but are actually kite strings, and a "living sky" is drawn by fireflies in Malaysia. Douzenel treats her camera like a painter's frame, capturing "fragments of reality" that extend beyond the lens. Her loops have seamless beginnings and ends to prove no trickery. Projection varies: a tiny monitor in a library for the bats, a rare large projection for the Malaysian fireflies. The BF15 in Lyon will host her solo exhibition in January, offering more poetic micro-narratives.