CALIFORNIA SCENARIO 

A Photographer’s Architectonic Interventions

In History and in Art History we need to know the WHAT and the WHEN to better understand the WHY and the HOW. Bouky Labhard’s photographs engage both with our intellect and our intuition. The artist generously shares with the viewer her filters, her choices, and ultimately her entire self. This body of six photographs, taken at Isamu Noguchi's “California Scenario” (his sculpture garden in Costa Mesa), is like an exercise in meditation. Noguchi created his zen garden as a platform for an ongoing dialogue between nature and sculpture, between the parts and the whole, between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Bouky Labhard made “California Scenario” her own, providing us with her decisive photographic moments as architectonic interventions. The clouds serve as a filter to light. We get immersed in this strong light, serving both as an embrace and as a reconnection with nature. Light and shadow make us think of our roots and our wings, of the traces we leave as human beings on our planet Earth. Formally powerful and conceptually thought-provoking, Bouky Labhard’s photographs are poems in time and in space, an invitation to reconnect with our essential humanity and an inspiration to write our own scenarios.

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Anna Tahinci, PhD. Professor and Chair of Art History. The Glassell School of Art. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston