Beatrice Helg
Geometries of Silence
Réattu Museum – Arles
July 5 - October 5, 2025
Swiss photographer Béatrice Helg has established herself as a unique figure in the history of staged photography.
Far from hyperrealist or narrative approaches, the artist developed a distinctive style in the 1980s, combining space, light, and material, which earned her international recognition.
Beatrice Helg - Equilibre-V - 2001
Influenced by the Russian avant-garde and Constructivism, passionate about music, and sensitive to the notions of space and time, architecture, and theater and opera staging, Béatrice Helg creates installations in her studio where sculpture, painting, staging, and, above all, light interact.
She composes installations using reclaimed materials or materials she imagines and shapes specifically for the shoot. Here, light becomes the essential material. It is the medium through which all revelation is possible.
Béatrice Helg - Cosmos-XVIII - 2018
Whether sculptures or ephemeral architecture, her monumental works emerge from the depths of silence, revealing worlds of shadow and light of strange beauty, as poetic as they are spiritual.We enter and lose ourselves, between dazzling and abysmal darkness! Béatrice Helg's work opens onto infinity, onto a quest for the absolute or the search for an inner mystery.
"To feel beauty is therefore to participate in abstraction through a particular agent.
In a sense, it is a reflection of the infinity of reality." Mark Rothko, "The Artist's Reality," 2004
Beatrice Helg - Esprit-froisse-VII
THE EXHIBITION
The largest monograph ever devoted to the work of Béatrice Helg presents a body of work of over 70 photographs in a refined scenography.
It brings together emblematic works and previously unseen creations, primarily large-format, from the series Théâtres de la lumière, Esprit froissé, Crépuscule, Éclats, Cosmos, Résonance, and Natura, created over the past 35 years.
Béatrice Helg - Metropolis-III - 1987
BÉATRICE HELG
Born in Geneva in 1956, Béatrice Helg continued her photography studies in California, then in New York at the International Center of Photography.
Nearly 70 solo exhibitions have been dedicated to her work in Europe, the United States, and Japan, including an exhibition at the Palazzo Fortuny, Venice; the IVAM – Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencia; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; and the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego. as well as at the Rencontres d’Arles.
Béatrice Helg - Labyrinthe - 1991
Her works are featured in numerous renowned collections:Musée Réattu, Arles; the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Maison européenne de la photographie, Paris; Photo Élysée, Lausanne; the Brooklyn Museum and the International Center of Photography, New York; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Her recent publications include BÉATRICE HELG, a monograph enriched with a dedication poem by Robert Wilson, texts by Serge Linarès and Philippe Piguet, and a poem by Sylviane Dupuis, published by 5 Continents, Milan, 2019.
Béatrice Helg - Crépuscule XIV - 2006
On the occasion of the exhibition "Béatrice Helg – Géométries du silence," the Musée Réattu is publishing a comprehensive catalog with texts by Patrick de Carolis, Daniel Rouvier, David Campany, and Nathalie Herschdorfer.Exhibition curators:
Daniel Rouvier, Chief Curator and Director of the Musée Réattu, and Béatrice Helg
Opening: Saturday, July 5, 2025 - 7 p.m.
This exhibition is part of the Associated Program of the Rencontres d'Arles 2025 and is supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia
ROYAL ARTS VISIONS; Beatrice Helg Geometries of Silence