Sorbonne Artgallery

At the moment when our colleague, Professor Robert Badinter, enters the Panthéon, we continue our program for the year and dedicate our new exhibition to him.

Entitled Kosmos and created by the artist Hervé Saint-Hélier, this exhibition brings together constellations in all their forms.
The photographic prints presented at Sorbonne Artgallery, produced in the secrecy of the artist’s studio, initially evoke Mallarmé and the evocative potential that an image may sometimes carry when it manages to bring us, even slightly, closer to “the power of the starry sky.” This form of elevation recalls not only works connected to the poetics of celestial matter, but also the daily experience of artists and researchers who attempt to give form to the unrepresentable—including scientists who navigate the world of imagery until they acquire the ability to transform a mental image into a photograph (a question also central to certain contemporary reflections on AI).

Saint-Hélier’s work resonates, in counterpoint, with research methods situated at the crossroads of astronomy, chemistry, and biology. It opens perspectives on what it means to be alive here on Earth. A subtle marriage between scientific precision and photographic storytelling accompanies the artist’s gesture on a daily basis and captivates our imagination.

Saint-Hélier’s images harness the power of visual narrative to bring our own discoveries to life and to make immediately accessible a kind of dreamlike knowledge buried within us—like a journey that is both instructive and emotional. An alliance thus emerges between logic and emotion, between scientific rigor and poetic imagery. We unconsciously adopt an innovative form of understanding territory, akin to the approach that formed the foundation of the work of visionary geographer Jean Gottmann, whose research helped shape our understanding of urban landscapes.

Far more than a mere cartographer of the imaginary cosmos, Saint-Hélier captures the complexity of urban imaginaries through his photographs. He transcends borders by offering a unique perspective on urbanism: a multiscalar and cosmic geography of nodes and networks, informed by the luminous and imaginary projections of the peoples who share these spaces as a common habitat.

“In Kosmos, there is no geometry—only stars. My work is created using electrical energy, which I compose through an empirical and phenomenological gesture. Deep within myself, I work in direct relation to the reality of the world’s great metropolises, which manifest mentally from a figurative space. This otherness escapes me, and I perceive only lights and fireflies that map a form of vision of the Earth from the space I inhabit. The constellation as I conceive it is like a reversal of reality, where luminous density set in motion questions me as much as it involves us all, by revealing a share of celestial humanity.”
— H.S-H

Born in France in 1969, Hervé Saint-Hélier began his career as a press photojournalist until 1989, when he decided to devote himself entirely to art. Through his travels around the world, Saint-Hélier captures the natural beauty of details and the singularity of the travelers he encounters. Under his lens, scenes of everyday life are transformed into abstract and poetic compositions.

Exhibited in numerous European and American collections, Saint-Hélier continues his artistic practice while currently living in Paris. His photographic wanderings were the subject of an exhibition entitled Voyage at Marlborough Graphics Gallery in New York in 2008. Abstraction, the cosmos, urban atmospheres, and portraiture are among the many subjects explored by Hervé Saint-Hélier, a renowned French photographer who, from journey to journey, composes a rich and multifaceted body of work. He is represented by Marlborough Gallery in New York.