The world of Roger Ballen between human psyche and the valors of "asphyxiating culture"

For over more than thirty years Roger Ballen, not only worked as a geologist, but also documented the strange world of the people who lived in remote towns of South Africa. The geologist-cum-photographer also knocked on doors taking stark black and white square format photographs of the people and the houses where they spent their lives. The interiors fascinated him with their distinctive collection of objects taking him on the path from social critique to a unique creation of metaphors for the inner mind. Later in 1994 he no longer worked in the countryside looking for subject matter, but found more inspiration closer to Johannesburg where he lived with his family.
 

Departing from the tradition of documentary photography, Ballen developed what he termed 'documentary fiction' during the 1990s.
After 2000 the people he documented living on the margins of society in South Africa, became increasingly participants of the series Ballen created such as 'Outland' in 2000 and 'Shadow Chambers' in 2005 : they collaborated in the powerful psychodramas staged by the photographer.

Soon the line between fantasy and reality in his following series, 'Boarding House' (2009) and 'Asylum of the Birds' (2014) became even more blurred when he began to use drawings, painting, collage and sculptural techniques to create elaborate sets where people were replaced by photographs of individuals like stage props, often represented by parts of disembodied hands, feet and mouths, poking through walls or pieces of rag. Animals began appearing in his scenarios, unpredictable and disturbing, despite still being firmly rooted in his black and white photography transformed by a newly invented aesthetic. Later he even incorporated video work into his visual language describing the human condition and its creative potential.
 

Roger Ballen thus ventured into the world of short films to complete his photographic series with films such as 'I Fink You Freeky' created for the cult band 'Die Antwoord' in 2012, a You Tube hit. In 2017. Ballen exposed sculpture and installation at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris and created a spectacular installation 'House of the Ballenesque' for Les Rencontres d'Arles later that year, voted as one of the best exhibitions of 2017. In 2018, he created another installation 'Roger Ballen's Bazaar/Bizarre' in an abandoned shopping center for the Wiesbaden Biennale, in Germany.

Earlier in 2016, Ballen was inspired by hand-drawn carvings on blacked-out windows in an abandoned women's prison, for his series 'The Theatre of Apparitions'. He began to experiment with different spray paints on glass, which he used as a base for drawings or even removing the paint to let natural light appear resembling pre-historic cave-paintings where Ballen carved thoughts and emotions.
 

Martine Lussardy, director of Halle Saint Pierre, the Parisian cultural center of art brut and unusual art, also curated the show 'Le Monde Selon Roger Ballen', a veritable retrospective of Ballen's work over several decades. Not only will Ballen unveil hitherto unseen installations, but he will also reveal his recent colour photography which he has never really presented before to the public. Reality and Fiction are constantly opposed in the work of this singular artist depicting the twisted vagaries of the human psyche.