Who hasn’t dreamt of seeing what the eye is incapable of grasping? This is the ambition of The Green Ray, the brainchild of artist Mustapha Azeroual and curator Marjolaine Lévy. The Green Ray is an extension of Mustapha Azeroual’s photographic practice, the core of which is the production of abstract images that seek to give form to light and colour.

These unique images, presented at the Rencontres d’Arles, are the result of a protocol that began with the recording of the color of the sky at sunrise and sunset on the high seas, in the Arctic, Indian and Pacific oceans and the Mediterranean Sea, territories which never before been explored by Mustapha Azeroual.

Working in close collaboration with sailors and navigators who have to follow a shooting protocol defined by the artist in order to capture the sunrises and sunsets, Mustapha Azeroual takes the most relevant colors from these fascinating images to produce abstractions that are then reproduced on lenticular supports.

These abstract images, as rich and varied as they are, subtly denounce human overactivity, insofar as the color of the sky, even in the ocean, is intrinsically linked to our presence on earth. Sensitive, poetic, and accessible, these images of exceptional chromatic diversity offer a view of the degradation of the world.

The Green Ray proposes to show that another way of abstraction is possible, an abstract work that is in tune with the problems and issues of our society and offers the public an intimate and sensitive optical experience, which seems essential and vital in the current context.

Marjolaine Lévy