„Hunting? Here? It is a matter at one and the same time cumbersome, vigorous, generous,
open to the scope and effervescence of the most brutal reality and of the most fragile dream, yet capable of appearing in various degrees of density—sometimes coarse material, thick; sometimes with a fluid deployment or an aerial display—particularly inscribing itself in life forms and those of hospitality, but also summoning offensive objects, wild constructions, frontline trenches and organizations of terrible inventions. In his videos, photographs and installations, Roland Fuhrmann casts a light—blending observation, contemplation, a documentary approach and narrative digressions—on the cruel circle that encloses hunter and hunted and on the world of a pigeon hunter’s palombières perched at the top of trees.
It is the strange result of the union of rigor and disorder, interior and exterior, immobility and movement, thus escaping all overly clear resolutions. Roland Fuhrmann leads the viewer to pierce the thicket in quest of identifying the chaotic contexts as an inexhaustible fund of forces and possibilities. He thereby takes into account the violence of roadside animal cadavers, to confront us with a wild culinary recipe for red partridge and to think about these funeral slabs erected to the glory of and the relentless link between the hunter and his hunting grounds.
Roland Fuhrmann introduces a dialogue with a territory, its purpose and its specificities, which must be vital. He is attentive to passions and emotions rooted in bodies and existences while
yet engaged in a cycle of life and death. In dialogue, he shows us that the diverse phases do not follow each other ineluctably so much as they overlap and mutually implicate each another—and particularly, perhaps, when they appear to us discordant.
He implies an effect of authenticity through this strange materiality of images, voices and sounds, of participation in daily life and of dynamic interplay with the environment. But this bias toward authenticity is multilateral. It constantly combines a specific choice of theatricality—that is, roles, scenery and actions in the mechanism of a composition and a game of artificiality. But what precisely is this dialogue aiming for? First of all, no doubt it aims to constantly exceed its limits. Roland Fuhrmann knows how to enlarge our field of vision, giving himself flexibility and distance so as to remain forever mobile and thus avoiding being blocked by what he sees, dissects and explores.“ Didier Arnaudet
