A Bridge of Melancholy and Strength
by Davide Centineo, New York, 2009

Lire la biographie en français

The art of Camille de Galbert is the art of the person in all its elements. Camille the dancer, Camille the musician, Camille the artist - each one of her recent creations is her own intimate Gesamtkunstwerk. Each embodies her multiple paths in search of her own personal identity in art and in life: her career as a dancer, her musical studies, her dual link with France and the United States. Such multifaceted experiences often push artists to create walls between themselves and their various activities and origins; on the contrary, in works such as Lionel and The Dancer, Camille has been able to proactively build a bridge between her places, her passions, and herself. Her bridge invites viewers to dream about their own secrets and wishes. It is a bridge designed with melancholy and strength - feelings captured by Camille’s gipsy lens, like cantes from a campfire.

Camille’s videos never function as the passive eye of a simple observer; instead they are constantly juxtaposed upon her various subjects as active storytellers of life - the games she plays weave through her relationship with the people and the places of her adopted city: New York City.

And it is through her roots in France and her life in New York that she has been able to push her creations beyond any geographic categorizations - she is no longer a French artist making art in New York, she is simply an artist making art.

Camille’s works on paper are direct and objective extensions of her life; they are not comments, observations, or judgements; they are relics of the archeology of her spirit. While her videos offer ethereal ideas of her being, these works on paper offer material
testimonies of her actions. In these pieces her creative intention finds its form in an object that has a weight, a time, and a place.

Through the years Camille’s craft has grown to blend moving pictures into a choreography of light, music, and verb. With this painter’s palate she has been capable of brushing from the oneiric airiness of the experimental Samir all the way into the hopeless desolation of the narrative One Day Like Another.

Camille de Galbert’s alchemy is made of words, bodies, breaths, and landscapes, with echos to Balzac’s metaphysics. And it is with this harmony that we can see through her art and into our own lives.