Olivier Dassault: 26 Works

In a recent interview Olivier Dassault commented, “Whatever I do is driven by an obsession to add beauty to whatever exists.”

Certainly in his previous incarnations (he has made successful careers as a pilot, a politician, a businessman and even a composer.) Dassault the photographer has had ample opportunity to observe what exists. His images feature a lifetime’s worth of keenly-eyed details wrapped in shadow or blasted with light; digital assemblages born of an intimacy with the objects of daily life as well as the wide-angles of an aerial view.

Shades of blue stolen from earth and sky predominate the compositions. The rusted edge of an aqua garbage chute leans into a velvety black panel. Computer screen instructions, ‘Push Button,’ occur inside a band of midnight blue. A detail from an airplane wing, rivets and all, glows in unnaturally bright light. Powder blue right angles intersect navy blue diagonals in an abstraction of doorways, each one disappearing inside the frame of the previous frame. Every composition seems informed by the geometry of memory. At close range, the viewer can sense the texture of fabric, feel the heat of sunlight illuminating what might be stained glass.  

Though beauty may well live first in the eye of the beholder, it is also alive and well in the sensibility and the ambition of this photographer.  

Mr. Dassault is based in Paris.  His work has been featured in exhibition throughout Europe.  This marks his initial exhibition with Louis Stern Fine Arts. An exhibition catalogue accompanies this presentation and is available for purchase through the gallery.