ROUSSET Thomas

Prabérians

France

2014

My pictures offer a mix of pictures on the border of reality and fantasy. I use staging as a device to play with the codes of fantasy and realism. Everyday life and strangeness stand alongside. But a divide between Here and Elsewhere appears: the waters are muddled, time and space are erased. The sceneries of my pictures are inspired from the coloured atmosphere of Fellini’s movies or from Kusturica’s cinema madness. The situations that are staged are absurd and give birth to a picturesque and playful universe. Beyond the sceneries, the subjects seem to have escaped from another time, from another culture. This “melting pot” of traditions finds its source in the sets of jewels and the costumes. The place of the animal plays an essential role; its function is ritual, even sacred. “Prabérians” is a world that is definitely utopian, the result of an awareness when faced with the vain notion of community in the contemporary western world.

About the artist

Born in 1984 in France, Thomas Rousset graduated in 2009 from ECAL in Lausanne, Switzerland, in photography. His images offer an ambiguous overlapping of representations and realities, a mixture that is constantly flirting with the limits of everyday life and imagination. The result is a stage representation that plays with the codes of both fairytales and realism. His work has been exhibited in various venues in Amsterdam, Bienne, Berne, Cologne, Zurich, Geneva and Arles. In addition to his personal practice, he contributes with his collective moos-tang.com to different publications such as Libération, PIG MAG and Neon Magazine. Thomas Rousset lives and works between Lausanne and Paris.