Paul Pouvreau's Subversive Photographs at Les Douches la Galerie

Les Douches la Galerie in Paris presents Paul Pouvreau's solo exhibition "Au propre comme au figuré," running from November 15, 2019, to January 18, 2020. The show features the photographer's decades-long practice of transforming everyday objects—plastic bags, packaging, and printed advertisements—into poetic still lifes. Pouvreau assembles humble items into fragile arrangements, then photographs them against white backgrounds, creating images that critique consumer culture and environmental contradictions. Series such as "Faits divers" (2003), "Mascarades" (since 2015), and "Les Invasives" (since 2018) echo across the gallery, blurring distinctions between natural and artificial, real and fictional. The artist uses salt, pushpins, and rubber bands to deface glossy magazine faces, turning them into grotesque masks. His work reinvests logos and commercial signs with new meaning, exposing the paradoxes of a society torn between consumption and environmental protection. The exhibition includes pigment prints on Canson Platine Fibre Rag paper and cibachrome prints, with works like "Les Invasives" (2018) and "Faits divers" (2003-04) on view.