Real allegories

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Olivier Richon's work addresses the desire for the exotic, the pleasures of imitation, the function of the object in the still life, and quotation and appropriation of art history. Anti-naturalistic, they explore the dream-like nature of representation as a frozen tableau, which may be deciphered slowly, yet which resists interpretation. This book collects 20 years of Richon's work. The title Real Allegories is taken from the notorious painting by Gustave Courbet, which shows a painter in the act of depiction, surrounded by his cultural contemporaries. In the context of Richon's work, the title refers to the tension between the realism of the photograph and the constructed meaning.