Paris Photo 2023

For Paris Photo 2023, Ruttkowski;68 proudly presents Traces of the Divine, a solo presentation of the quintessential photography of François Halard (b.1961 in Paris, FR).

A series of original Polaroids that alongside new larger blown-ups with painterly intervention, invites to a pilgrimage through
Halard’s iconic images – a glimpse of what has been most inspirational to him in the past decades. Sources of cultural
artifacts of ancient Roman, Greek and Egyptian aesthetics are depicted through the photographer’s eye that then have been
transformed by the artist’s hands.

Objects become a part of a narrative that Halard spans through adding layers of wax in intuitive gestures. Marble sculptures
from the original Polaroids become storytellers, breathing life into the long gone, preserved now in wax, revealing what
photography alone does not always allow. Through this journey on the traces of the divine, one becomes spectator of intimate
interferences between artist and artwork; between past and future and all captured in between.