Triptyque Joie, Circa 2024

Catherine Dedieu Lugat  

Photographer and visual artist Catherine Dedieu Lugat has developed a unique artistic approach informed by her personal journey, marked by a serious accident. She captures fragments of everyday life through her lens to reveal their hidden aesthetics, following the spirit of Japanese wabi-sabi, which celebrates the beauty of imperfect and ephemeral things.

Committed to an eco-responsible approach, Catherine Dedieu Lugat frames her work as a reflection on time, memory, and the human impact on the environment. For over 17 years, she has exhibited her work in more than 60 exhibitions, both in France and internationally, notably in Argentina and Tokyo. Her work on water has been presented in numerous towns and villages in southwest France.

Her works are the result of meticulous observation: a worn wall, a torn poster, the rust of a gate, or the shimmer of a puddle become abstract and sensitive compositions, without retouching, in an approach she describes as "raw photography." Her prints, created on various media such as watercolor paper, textile tarpaulin, rice paper, or aluminum, offer a materiality that reinforces the poetic dimension of her work.

Alongside her personal work, she participates in several artistic associations and is the founder of the "De l'Art en Barre" Collective, a project that highlights artists with atypical backgrounds and promotes the integration of artists with disabilities into the art market. She lives and works between Paris and the Lot region, where she has set up her studio.

Catherine Dedieu Lugat's photographic work is an invitation to see the beauty around us, to pay attention to the details we overlook. Through her lens, she captures fleeting moments where the wear and tear of time and human traces transform matter into works of art. Her approach, rooted in an aesthetic of minimalism and assumed imperfection, is part of the wabi-sabi tradition, with a contemporary interpretation.

Her images do not seek to tell a story in the narrative sense of the term, but rather to suggest an emotion, to create an encounter between the viewer and the unexpected. By playing with textures, contrasts, and color composition, she deconstructs the boundary between reality and abstraction, opening up an infinite field of interpretation.

Far from simple documentary work, her perspective reinvents the everyday and gives it an artistic dimension where each detail becomes a tangible imprint of the world. Her ecological commitment, evident in her choice of media and her desire to repurpose materials, also echoes her overall vision of a conscious, accessible, and profoundly human art.

His "De l'Art en Barre" project is a natural extension of his commitment: to make art accessible to all and to offer artists, particularly those with disabilities, a space for expression and appreciation. This initiative reflects a strong conviction: art only has meaning if it engages in dialogue with society and builds bridges between individuals.