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bis 01.08. | #5105ARTatBerlin | BBA Gallery is currently showing the exhibition “While the Shadows Dream Upright” by the artist Pierre-Yves Cruaud.
The exhibition brings together two photographic series that explore the night as a space of memory, the unfamiliar and revelation. These images seek to capture precisely those moments when reality recedes to make way for fragments of dreams. Each composition is conceived in the spirit of a minimalist painting; the ‘figures’ inhabiting these ‘spaces’ appear to be hostages to their own history and the traces they leave behind.
In While the Shadows Dream Upright, Cruaud explores the night not merely as an absence of light, but as a fertile psychological space where memory and reality blur. Drawing formal inspiration from minimalist painting, Cruaud’s highly precise compositions isolate fragments of the world as daylight recedes, capturing the transition where the familiar becomes strange and poetic. The exhibition’s title pays homage to the surrealist philosophy of René Magritte, utilizing deliberate cognitive shifts to challenge the viewer’s habitual reading of an image. Cruaud’s darkroom and digital practices treat the photographic surface as an enigmatic threshold, oscillating between documentation and dream state. By stripping away unnecessary environmental context, his works function as quiet visual poems, inviting viewers to explore the vital, unsettling beauty found within the shadows.
About Pierre-Yves Cruaud
Pierre-Yves Cruaud is a French visual artist with a background in film studies, which he studied from 1993 to 1996. His artistic practice centres on the still image as a space for imaginary and sensory exploration. He has been making experimental films and videos since 2000. He composed the music for the feature film *Should the Wind Drop*, directed by Nora Martirosyan (Official Selection – Cannes Film Festival 2020), before turning to photography in 2021.
Rather than capturing the world as it appears, Cruaud seeks to portray it as he imagines it, using photography to evoke inner experiences and emotional landscapes. His images are characterised by a minimalist theatricality that challenges realism. Carefully staged yet enigmatic, they invite the viewer to identify with the scene, whilst at the same time subverting expectations.
Cruaud’s work often revolves around the concept of metamorphosis, a recurring metaphor for transformation, uncertainty and psychological depth. His photographs suggest moments that hover between different states, in which the familiar becomes unfamiliar and the static becomes dynamic.
In 2025, he was a joint winner of the first prize at the BBA Photography Prize.
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 04. July – Saturday, 01. August 2026
To the gallery
Title image caption: Pierre-Yves Cruaud, A Wink at Méliès, 2024, 60 x 60, Photography. Courtesy of BBA Gallery
Exhibition Pierre-Yves Cruaud – BBA Gallery | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Ausstellungen Berlin Galerien | ART at Berlin
