The solitary surfer

Concept

Somewhere between dreams and playfulness, Alain Longeaud's work has been built over years, like a grand book of images and stories... Seductive, fascinating even, the work is deeper than it may appear. We think we see something, defined, recognisable, suggested, but in fact it is a sensation, a thought which, born in the eye, diffuses through the mind.
We are captured between light and composition: nothing is stable, behind the horizon of apparently inconsistent aesthetics, we are to read another story. An attempt to transgress reality without denying it. The artist acts not as a guide... even though a path between mood and humour is offered in the titles he gives to his images.
Images, mirages. A rivalry of reality and dreams? Rather, complementarity, complicity. Requiring the collaboration of the viewer, who is willing to follow the intrigue of Alain Longeaud's work. Decidedly graphic, it is essential that they be aesthetic. Though photographic of course, they are also manifestly cinematographic. Moreover, there is myth, drama and fate in his work. And the absurd! As such, the place is of no consequence, the photograph is not meant to describe it.
Images, characters. Essence, presence-absence, permanence? Alain Longeaud aims to create a metaphysical image of the world. Behind the mundane, the apparently normal, strangeness lurks in shadows and mirrors, landscapes dissimulate figures. A rare silhouette, precisely depersonalized. Yet life is of the essence. Alain Longeaud celebrates it in his own way with as much serenity as poetry, with images void of human beings but never of humanity. Perhaps to express Yearning. For each to recognize their own...
Patrick Le Fur, Art critic
I like to quote Gerhard Richter : “I do not obey any intention, any system, any tendency… I like uncertainty, infinity and permanent insecurity“.