CAROLINE WIART & PATRICE GALIANA

Caroline Wiart is an interior architect passionate about contemporary art, architecture, design, and contemporary photography. Patrice Galiana, on the other hand, is the deputy director at a marketing company. Both have been collecting contemporary photography for over 20 years. They build relationships with the artists they collect and closely follow their practices.

Just mentioning a few names of the authors of books chosen by Caroline Wiart & Patrice Galiana (Christian Boltanski, Bernard Plossu, Patrick Tosani, Patrick Bailly-Maître-Grand, Denis Roche, Michel Poivert...) gives an idea of the caliber of this selection ! But beyond the names, a closer look quickly reveals that the carte blanche offered to this duo of curators places a strong emphasis on the human condition. Notably, this selection includes numerous books that explore the relationship with the body, with notable references such as Chapitre sur les petites amputations (David Nebrada, 2004, Editions Léo Scheer) and A Body (John Coplans, 2002, PowerHouse Books). Reflecting their own thoughts on photography, the collector couple has also centered their selection on a perpetual and fascinating questioning of the photographic medium, exemplified by works like Le Photographique, Pour une Théorie des Écarts (Rosalind Krauss, 1990, Macula) and La Photographie Plasticienne, Un Art Paradoxal (Dominique Baqué, 1998, Regard), as well as the intriguing book Le Tirage à Mains Nues by Guillaume Geneste (Lamaindonne, 2020).

This sublime selection also includes very rare artist books, such as Portraits by Patrick Tosani (1985, Galerie Liliane et Michel Durand-Dessert), which contains prints by the artist, and Tom Drahos's Le Vieux Mystère (1987, Rémanences éditions), a work that sits between an artist's book, a portfolio, and a book object, notably featuring reproductions of the artist's original prints.