Katerina Jebb

Katerina Jebb (born 15 November 1962) is a British-born artist, photographer and film-maker.

After studying drama at St Anne's College, in 1984 she moved to California to study photography. Her first works were photomontages which she created inside the camera, originating from repeated exposure of a single roll of film.

In 1989, Jebb moved to Paris and worked for the French newspaper Libération.

In 1991, Jebb began to employ machines to make life-size images, primarily self-portraits, laying herself on a high-resolution scanning machine. Subsequently, she explored a greater diversity of techniques in parallel with the expanding possibilities in digital technology. Jebb proceeded to remove parts of the scanner to facilitate maximum extension of the subject. The duration of each passage of the scanner echoed early photographic principles, being seven minutes long, therefore demanding of the sitter to lie motionless for 28 minutes. The resulting images appeared in museums and galleries, notably The Whitney Museum as part of The Warhol Look (1998), a world touring retrospective. Her early work was subsequently published in Life, The Times and Vogue. She also uses domestic scanning machines, and composes multiple digital files to create an exact rendition of the original.

Simulacrum and Hyperbole, a 12 part series of videos featuring Tilda Swinton, Kristin Scott Thomas, Marisa Berenson and Kylie Minogue was exhibited at Gloria Maria Gallery Milan. In these works Jebb parodies contemporary consumerist practice in advertising. The Japanese brand Comme des Garçons subsequently commissioned a series of perfume campaigns entitled "You Can Find Beautiful Things Without Consciousness" employing the same satirical language. The series is presented on Jebb's imaginary TV channel, Lucid TV, and was premiered on Purple Television in 2014.

Technique

Within the exhibition "Les rencontres de la photographie", the followed critical commentary was made on her work (original text in French):

Much has already been written on the relationship between death and photography, on reality and fiction, on the blurring of genres – all fundamental themes in contemporary photography and also in the work of Katerina Jebb, an English artist based in Paris. What catches the attention is the weird aesthetic conjured by her technique. Her portraits – now printed from scans, and previously from photocopies – use a method that seems to denature life and maybe even nudge it over to the other side. And on the other side, the skin is even smoother and sometimes porcelain-white in colour; forms flatten and the aura of the gaze vanishes forever – as if, precisely, the breath of life was so diminished as to be lost. The stiffness of the characters gives us no clue as to the model's position: are they levitating, or are we in the presence of recumbent funerary statues? This stiffness, and the sumptuous dresses, also call to mind the saints carried through southern European streets during religious processions. The sacred has a part to play, too. Wavering, perhaps. Is this gaze – which isn’t one, really – eternity? The moment the photograph was taken is no longer at issue. These are frozen images – as is any photograph, of course, but here the function is multiplied. Mummification or embalmingo. In 1890, Dr Variot, a Paris hospital physician, proposed a new method of embalmingo, ‘galvanic anthropoplasty’, based on the use of silver nitrate, a substance well known to the period’s photographers. Katerina Jebb plays a little game of convergence and of process exchange: in a dizzying mise en abîme of the medium’s basic principles, she shows us an image whose aesthetic comes close to this idea. The garment – the most beautiful garment, of course – is deposited. As if it were the last worn; as if it were for eternity. What is captured is thus no longer an instant of life, but the appearance thereof in all its splendor. Vincent Juillerat, art historian, 2008

The Director of the Musée Galliera wrote the following text concerning her work:

I feel that Katerina Jebb desires to produce photographic works to chase away her doubts. Aided by the cold ray of light, it is the object, the clothing and sometimes even the human body that she examines in its shell, its skeleton. She turns photography into a ritual and sacred exercise in which the clothes and portraits are seen in a raw state. Her lost and rediscovered images are the absurd and drained mirrors of our worlds, of which they reveal tenderness and a sense of abandonment. Olivier Saillard Director of le Musée Galliera Paris, 2012

Exhibitions

Museum exhibitions

• Musée Réattu, Oser la photographie, 2015-2016

• Metropolitan Art Museum Tokyo, The Inventory of Balthus, 2014
• Palais de Tokyo Paris, The Festival of Autumn, "The Future Will Last A Very Long Time" 2012
• Momu Mussée d'Anvers, Madame Grés Sculptural Fashion, 2012
• Musée Réattu, Arles, Acte V, 2012
• Centre Pompidou Paris, You Can Find Beautiful Things Without Consciousness, Asvoff Festival, 2011
• Museum Of The Moving Image, New York, Opening Title Sequence, Birds Of Paradise, 2011
• Musee Bourdelle, Paris, Madame Gres, La Couture A L’oeuvre, Life Size Composite Scans, 2011,
• National Museum Kulturforum, Visions and Fashion, Berlin, 2011
• Musée Réattu, Arles, France,"Still and Living Objects and Women", 2008
• Musée Réattu, Arles, France, "Chambre d'Echo", 2009
• Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, "Avantgarderobe, Kunst und Mode im 20. Jahrhundert" 1999
• The Whitney Museum, New York, "The Warhol Look: Glamour, Style and Fashion” 1998
• Musée de la Mode, Marseille 1998
• Musée des Beaux Arts, Ontario 1998
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney 1998
• The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburg 1998

Gallery/ Group Shows

• Paul Kasmin Gallery New York, The Written Trace, 2015
• The Festival of Arles, L'Arlesienne, 2014

• The Balthus Foundation, Le Tablier de Balthus, 2014

• Librarie Mazarine Paris 2013, Le Tablier de Balthus
• FIAC 2013 Hôtel de Miramion Paris, Spot – Balice Hertling in collaboration with Nilufar and Giò Marconi Gallery
• Art Paris Grand Palais, Analix Gallery Geneva, 2012
• Vara Fine Arts VPL, New York, Second Skin, 2012,
• La Chapelle Balthus La Rossiniere, Switzerland, Le Tablier De Balthus, Documentary Film & Life Size Composite Scans, 2011
• Trading Museum Comme Des Garcons, Paris, Simulacrum & Hyperbole, Video Installation, 2011
• British Film Institute Southbank, Birds Eye View Film Festival 2011, Simulacrum & Hyperbole, 2011
• Gloria Maria Gallery, Milan "Simulacrum & Hyperbole", 2010
• Brachfeld Gallery Paris, In the Realm of the Senses, 2010
• The Barbican Centre London, The Curve Gallery, video installation for Acne Studios 2009
• Contemporary Art Space of Dudelange, Luxembourg, "Faire Peau de l'Inconscient" 2009
• Art Gallery of the General Council, Aix en Provence, curator Olivier Saillard 2009
• Palais de l'Archeveque, Rencontres d'Arles, France "Untitled Icons 1–8" 2008
• Le Laboratoire, Paris "On Capturing a Cloud", video installation 2008
• Dover Street market, London "Comme des Garçons", mixed media installations 2008
• “Comme des Garçons", Japan, human photocopy installation 2007
• Givenchy, Paris, "Unidentified N°35", video projection and large scale human photocopy 200)
• Givenchy, Madison Avenue, New York, "Art meets fashion" 2006
• Anne Faggionato Gallery, London, "Psycho, Art and Anatomy", Autoportrait Oral and Real Doll, 2000
• The Hayward Gallery, Southbank, London, “Addressing the Century, 100 years of Art and Fashion” 1999
• Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth 1998
• RMIT Gallery, The Melbourne Festival, "Hype Fashion, Art and Advertising" 1999
• CCAC Gallery, San Francisco, "Fast Forward", video and installation, collaboration with "Comme des Garçons" 1998
• Kunstlerhaus Gallery, Vienna, "Fast Forward", video and installation, collaboration with "Comme des Garçons" 1998

Permanent collections

• Musée des Arts Décoratifs du Louvre, Paris, France
• Musée Réattu, Arles, France
• Musée Galliera, Paris

Publications

• Musée Galliera, Paris Haute Couture, Olivier Saillard et Anne Zazzo, (éditions Skira Flammarion, Sophie Laporte, 2012),
• Acne Paper, interview Professor Van der Kemp, 2012
• Purple magazine interview Olivier Zahm, 2013

Film festivals

• Barbican, BFI Southbank, Tate Modern, London, Fashion in Film Festival, "Birds of Paradise", 2010
• ICA Gallery, London, "Birds Eye View Festival", film projection (2009)

Television

• Canal+, France, "Essay on failure Malcolm McClaren" (2001)
• Channel 4, London, "Illuminations, zoom", films by fashion photographers (1999)