SPARK 2025

For SPARK Art Fair 2025, Ruttkowski;68 proudly presents the work of Francois Halard (b. 1961, Paris, FR) is known for his photographs of interior spaces, architecture, and fashion, and his work is regularly featured in lifestyle magazines such as Vogue. Halard takes special interest in capturing elements of space and place in relation to the psychology of people. His so-called house portraits have been praised for their psychological intensity.

Breaking free from the commercial framework, Halard’s works show  photographs made with a Polaroid camera, cropped, enlarged, eventually reworked – some of them partially recoated by words or lines, drops or patterns of wax, inks or oil paints. Remaining true to his photographic understanding that discloses a poetic sensibility and a personal history, Halard captures intricate details of statues, objects, furniture, the interplay of light and shadow that set the mood of a room, or an artist’s blunt gaze. Through an appropriation of some of the historically most iconic imagery of painting – still life and the depiction of flowers laden with symbolism – Halard creates a homage to the act of painting in and through photography.

Halard’s artistic story is both an intimate, personal exploration and a reminiscence. His lens lends a sacred aura to the places it focuses on during his journey. Painterly interventions allow him to capture what photography alone does not allow him to capture. In this way he relates to the world, a world in which beauty is both a necessity and a virtue; it finds its highest expression in his – almost anthropological – explorations of our way of life.

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