Algues maudites, Red Bloom, an exhibition by Alice Pallot

We are delighted to invite you to discover an exhibition by Alice Pallot, developed in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and Leica.

Running from October 12, 2024 to January 11, 2025 in the Leica Gallery, this exhibition merges two worlds, creating a unique resonance between the striking images captured by Earth Observation satellites and the contemporary artwork of Alice Pallot. Through this innovative approach, the photographer invites us to explore contemporary environmental issues while highlighting the fragile beauty of our planet.

ESA Leica Gallery Paris 2024

ESA

Algues maudites, Red Bloom

At Leica's suggestion, Alice Pallot was chosen for her anticipatory documentary work on the proliferation of green algae in the Bay of Saint-Brieuc, initiated in 2022 with Résidence1+2 and scientists from CNRS Occitanie-Ouest. A veritable health and environmental problem, green algae generate olfactory and toxic pollution along the Breton coastline. In large quantities, their decomposition releases a gas which, when highly concentrated, becomes lethal.

ESA Exposition Leica Gallery Paris 2024

ESA

In this project, Alice Pallot opens a new exploratory chapter on the consequences of climate change, which the artist parallels with Earth Observation images from ESA. These new images, associated with her previous research work, interact with ESA images of the ocean, revealing phytoplankton blooms invisible to the naked eye.

Europe is the world leader in Earth Observation, thanks to a constellation of state-of-the-art satellites. This activity is essential for understanding and monitoring environmental problems and climate change, and for achieving sustainable development goals.

Red Bloom, the third part of the Algues maudites series, focuses on the phenomenon of photosynthesis, in which green algae absorb the sun's red rays, accelerating their proliferation. To materialize this phenomenon, Alice Pallot unveils images of threatened ecosystems in the Bay of Saint-Brieuc, accompanied by landscapes created in situ, where an interpretation of this phenomenon becomes visible.

ESA Leica Gallery Paris 2024

ESA

As part of her artistic research, Alice Pallot pushes the medium to its limits by cultivating harmful algae on her prints. This process, initiated at Villa Perochon, allows us to experience a toxicity that is not visible in the natural environment, and which imprints itself on the photographic print after 3 weeks of incubation.

Imbued with a science-fictional imagination, her images denounce invisible environmental issues through poetic experiments with a strong aesthetic charge. The photographer creates an immersive experience of the polluted natural world: an inventory of the faded beauty of a world deteriorated by the Anthropocene era.