Elger Esser, Celestial Memory

Elger Esser draws his inspiration from the natural phenomena that define and shape the landscape, such as the ebb and flow, the tidal bore and high tides, as well as the cultural and religious history surrounding Saint Aubert, founder of Mont-Saint-Michel in the 8th century.

Discover the results of the artist's residency at the Abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel in 2022 and 2023 during his carte blanche exhibition Elger Esser. Celestial memory !

The body of work presented is inspired by nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, in particular the works of Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant and Marcel Proust. For example, the series of photographs Combray (2005-2016) explores the imaginary worlds suggested by the reading of Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu .

Born in 1967, Elger Esser is a Franco-German artist who grew up in Rome before studying at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. Over the last 30 years, he has travelled the length and breadth of France, its coastline and its regions, painting a vast portrait of the country and its landscapes, from Cabourg to Biarritz, via Giverny and Wimereux.

The sites chosen by Elger Esser are landscapes steeped in historical and cultural vestiges. His favourite motif is undoubtedly water: the sea, the river, the pond... In his compositions, the real landscape, often rendered in a different colour tone from that delivered by nature, appears transfigured.

Elger Esser also reflects on the history of photography and its dialogue with painting. The artist has developed technical processes that create a body of work halfway between these two modes of expression.

His works can be found in the collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the MoMa and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Lehnbachhaus in Munich, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Albertina in Vienna.