Under closed eyelids – an exquisite corpse of images

If reality goes beyond the unreason of dreams, can we still trust what we see?

From July 7 to October 5. Meanwhile, 2025, the Fisheye Gallery invests its Arles space with the collective exhibition Under closed eyelidscarried out under the police station of Tess Druot et Anaïs Coudonbringing together four emerging artists – The Nyoon Liangé, Elosse Labbar-lafn, Laose MOhman et Anna Muller.

Through practices mixing photography. In addition, painting, collage and various visual forms, they embark on a journey where reality, memory, dream and imagination are formed. Therefore, Their works awaken a contemporary surreal sensitivity, emerging in the cracks between visible and invisible, real and fiction.

By playing with illusion. Meanwhile, while preserving the breath of reality, their creations open a vast imaginary ground where parallel and alternative realities materialize. In addition, Like an exquisite corpse. Therefore, the exhibition consists of the fragments under closed eyelids – exquisite of their universes, where each image seems to convene the next, in an endless dialogue.

Chinese photographer’s work Nyo Jinyong Lian oscillates between stability and collapse. Moreover, In a fragile reality, his images are as many anchor points, benchmarks to navigate the uncertainty of the world. Meanwhile, Top -inspired The emperor’s new clothes From Hans Christian Andersen. Furthermore, Lian embodies the child who dares to say loudly what adults are silent, revealing, with candor and irony, the naked absurdity of reality. Consequently, By building visual fables, it invites you to revisit our perception of reality.

An enigmatic look emanating from countless spiral hands, to the relaxed girl who size a bouquet made of red balloons … Similarly, The female figures under the lens of Lian appear both detached and impassive, defying any appropriation. Nevertheless, In Intrusion (2023), a blood red wall invades the frame. Similarly, Through a small under closed eyelids – exquisite wooden window encrusted in the wall. For example, a piercing look fixes us, like a giant ready to take out its claws. Therefore, This presence radiates an invisible force that makes all our certainties vacillate.

Pursuing this quest, Eloïse Labarbe-Lafonformer film restaurateur and documentary archives colorist, navigates between reality, dream and narrative reconstruction. She repainted her black. white silver prints in oil, with a brush or with her fingertips, offering a new spectrum in memory. By this delicate manual gesture, she infuses her images with vibrant materiality, making her imaginary universe almost palpable. We allow ourselves to it, caught up in the heart of the whirlwind of illusions that she deploys.

The photographing process. developing and then coloring is revealed for the artist a therapeutic experience, especially when it comes to self -portraits. Coloring your images is opening an intimate dialogue between two “me” from different time. awakening under closed eyelids – exquisite the other self with the brushing of the fingers, and filling in color the interior gaps. Black and white, pastel tones and bright colors intertwine, leaving several temporalities coexist. These dreamlike images, make up as many reunited tales of reality as intimate spaces suspended out of time.

Chez Rose Mihmanwhose work also revolves around the self -portrait. the photographs extend such as real pictorial canvases, where anachronism widens our distance to reality more. A collector of old objects. she slips into the shoes of a time traveler, straight out of the beautiful dream era, but never frozen. Its “magic formula” lies in the ingenious alliance between digital. argentic processes, giving life to grainy images where period clothes and contemporary body language enter into striking friction.

Attached to the “faults” of photography, Mihman deliberately rejects traditional aesthetic canons. The disturbing figures. sometimes violent, which populate their images are as under closed eyelids – exquisite many mocking provocations with regard to established standards as a radical declaration of female subjectivity. We imagine them humming, sketching a baroque dance freely in the interstices of time.

In contrast to this expansive energy, the works ofAnna Muller want to be contemplative and meditative. Its aesthetics draw both from Russian rigor, Japanese minimalism and French photographic training, reflecting a deeply multicultural intuition. Composed of photographs. paintings and fashion images, its collages favor the line and the color, deploying a balanced structure which invites to an aerial and harmonious visual experience.

Its reuse of images taken from forgotten magazines has not only shaped its singular visual language. but also constitutes a critical reflection on the era of images of images. By the recomposition of these materials. Muller weaves a refined link between photography, plastic arts and fashion, blurring the boundaries between these disciplines to bring out a poetic under closed eyelids – exquisite aesthetic where humans and nature overlap.

Four artists, four voices, four universes. The female gaze is available here endlessly: piercing, introspective, scrutinizing, contemplative. Under closed eyelidsthe vision does not go out. The artist’s eye becomes a shutter piercing the real: at the time of the closure. the visible turns into imaginary material and is reborn in the form of an image.

At a time when yesterday’s chimeras become today’s reality. contemporary photographic surrealism is no longer content to address only the subconscious and dreams. In this universe where real and virtual merge, artists develop strategies tinged with humor, lightness and play. Their creations explore new intermediate zones. embodying a subtle eclecticism in the face of the harshness of reality, a gentle but determined response.

Between familiarity and strangeness, ecstasy and melancholy, the exhibition opens like a female dream quartet, a poem of bewitching images. She makes a collective under closed eyelids – exquisite response to a reality that has become absurd. whimsical, offering a sensitive and resolved look at this disconcerting world.

Deng Qiwen

Under closed eyelids
From July 7 to October 5. 2025
Fisheye Gallery
19, rue Jouvène, 13200 Arles
Opening Friday July 11th
Opening week, from July 7 to 13: open daily from 11 to 8 p.m.
July to October: Tuesday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
https://fisheyegallery.fr/