‘‘Each scene is an adventure and a story in and of itself.’’
—Reine Paradis
For her first series Jungle, Reine Paradis (French, b.1989) begins with preparatory maquettes that she faithfully follows as blueprints for each shoot, constructing mysterious scenarios inhabited by the intrepid characters she herself portrays. This performative aspect is key to her image-making process: ‘It is a necessity for me to “live” the scene in order to transmit the original vision completely.’ In L’Envol, which translates as ‘The Takeoff’, we see a lone figure poised at the edge of a water tank, her cape fluttering behind and origami bird hovering overhead. Applying hyperreal colours and fictional touches to real locations, in this case, a water tank in Los Angeles, Paradis playfully explores the boundaries between reality and fiction. She self-published her first monograph Jungle in 2017 and her 2019 feature documentary Queen of Paradis – on the making of her latest series Midnight – won ‘Best Feature’ at the LA Indie Film Festival in the same year.
Making-of video for Reine Paradis’s L’Envol, 2016. Courtesy of the artist.
Reine Paradis, Maquette for L’Envol, 2016. Courtesy of the artist.
The World of Paradis began quite small, as it should for something just beginning,
A girl on a platform about to take flight, eyes wide open and surly grinning.
Atop this giant drum is no ordinary place, especially to begin such an odyssey,
Then again, Jungle is no ordinary world, and that is putting it modestly.
Poem for L'Envol, written by the artist's husband, filmmaker Carl Lindstrom.
2016 Archival pigment print, mounted. Image: 100 x 150 cm (39 3/8 x 59 in.) Frame: 102.5 x 153 cm (40 3/8 x 60 1/4 in.) Signed in ink, printed title, date and number AP2 on a Certificate of Authenticity affixed to the reverse of the frame.
This work is AP2 from the sold-out edition of 3 + 2 APs.