Thanks to Fréderic Lebain, you have the opportunity to taste chocolate photographs…

FREDDIE
Born in 1966 in l’Isle- Adam, forever teenager Frédéric Lebain seems to take stock of his career path in 2006.
Trained as a cook, then food stylist and finally photographer, he has always embraced very tasty activities, enjoying aesthetic as well as technical features.
This time, the gourmet photographer transformed his studio into a culinary experimental lab to achieve his new series.

THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY
Using a very old technique in confectionery to chocolate-coat cakes, Freddie froze during several days object s picked from his own world. Then he sprayed hot chocolate on them using an airbrush. Turned away from their function through this very personal little cuisine, these entirely chocolate-coated objects thus took slick design profiles with a delicate velvet finish. Last step of the proces s, the shooting definitively catches on film these monochrome “still lifes”.

CHOCOLATE NONSENSE
Freddie’s pictures are then a series of goodies that we are allowed to savour… but with eyes only. It is this notion of “please do not touch” that inspired the selection of the objects to be chocolate-coated. All these “ sacred” object s are related to Freddie’s childhood memories when he highly-coveted them at home, at buddies’, in museums, at the baker’s–they’re now immortalized on acid-free paper “powdered” with ink jets and surely…

RECIPE FOR A BLISSFUL REGRESSION

An all dessert menu for gourmets of all ages
Preparation: forty years of memories
Freezing: several days
Chocolate spraying: a few minutes
Fixation: instant photography
Ingredients:
For the chocolate souvenirs:
A car phone
An Apple computer
A Minitel
An Atari game console
Trophies
An 8 mm camera and projector
A porcelain dog
A dial phone
A disco ball
A turntable
Technical inspiration:
A twisted version of the Easter egg
Artistic references:
The compositions of Morandi’s paintings (a carafe, glas ses and fruits)
Rodney Graham’s “Rheinmetall/Victoria 8” (featuring a 1930s German typewriter progres sively covered by a snowy white powder

Practical information

GALERIE PHILIPPE CHAUME
9 rue de Marseille 75010 Paris ,
tél . 01 42 39 12 60
mail : info@galeriephilippechaume.com

To discover Frédéric Lebain’s photograph, you can visit his website:
P r o p i c e