In the almost remote days of analog photography, there was a moment between taking the picture and developing the negative, when the film, although impressed by the light, let nothing of it show through. The image was there, but invisible: it was said to be latent. Its invention dates back to the daguerreotype, when it was necessary to shorten exposure times that were already far too long. In this way, we avoided waiting for the image to form on the surface of Daguerre's polished silver plates. So, even if nothing seemed to appear at first glance, the mercury vapors revealed the impression later.

Clément Rodzielski's work could thus be described as “mercurian”, since it consists in revealing latent images and compositions, and sometimes even producing them. Through a series of gestures (printing, painting, isolating, enlarging, cutting, doubling, bending, etc.), he permanently exposes signs and images that we had before our eyes without seeing them. To this blindness, which stems from a certain indifference, a visual apathy towards images in constant circulation and a weariness with their availability, the artist opposes an insatiable attention. For Rodzielski, the sign is everywhere, and if we're not careful, it can simply slip through our fingers and vanish forever.

For Untitled (Cary Grant), for example, he exhibited a series of postcards featuring actors, one of which was marked with a sticker crossed out with a cross. This uncertain sign is in fact a signal that the seller from whom he had purchased the images had given himself to indicate that his stock of postcards was running out. The cards are displayed on a cleat that takes up the dominant color of the cards it supports. This is indeed a found sign, just like the compositions formed by these large black panels arranged in staggered rows, which originate from the game of coloring the squares of a page, never putting the same color in adjacent squares. In Sans Titre (2008), it's the blackened squares that signify a dead end and a failure, which Rodzielski decides to enlarge sculpturally alongside found examples of this pastime. Proof that an available sign can make a good composition.

For, if we are to appropriate signs that belong to others, we might as well use those that have been downgraded, those that no longer have any value for their owner. The cinema poster announcing a film that is no longer scheduled, and which we find several times in the work, could be an example of these images that remain even though their usefulness has passed. The same is true of fashion magazines, which, in essence, go out of fashion and lose their interest. The compositions Rodzielski achieves through a series of oblique cuts allow us to view the magazine as a reserve of compositions concealed within its thickness, rather than as a medium for a flow of transitory advertising images. The absence of words in these compositions underlines the fact that the informative content of the image is always less important than its material qualities.

It is on this materiality that Rodzielski bases his work, and for this reason, the transition from screen to print is a recurring gesture throughout his oeuvre. Images that exist and circulate solely through digital mediation can also be described as latent, since they are stored somewhere and only appear on demand. Rodzielski's job is to give them a tangible existence. This process of reification exalts the particular qualities of this type of image, which suddenly finds itself endowed with a reverse side, a right side, edges, dimensions and gravity. In short, a materiality that can be manipulated, as in the piece Sans titre (Jean-Louis Murat). The same applies to Sans titre - inkjet print on A4 format, compositions Rodzielski creates by printing website images saved in GIF. This format, which compresses images by reducing their nuances to a few colors, bears witness to the early days of the Web (1.0), when low connection speeds made it impossible to display pages that were too heavy. Virtually obsolete today, this type of pattern accumulates in the memory of web browsers like fish in a dragnet. Arranged one on top of the other on a vertical A4 sheet, they form ready-made elements for abstract, colorful compositions.

Once again, the content is less important than the cut, and Rodzileski often looks for frames rather than subjects. When he uses the strips of figurative wallpaper that represent a waterfall, an undergrowth or a seashore, it's because they are already a cutout that unwittingly frames elements in the motif. These found frames can then be used to create a composition using different wallpapers, emphasizing the chance cuts that standardization imposes on these images. The composition that unites these disparate elements follows the adage of strength in numbers. In this quest for pre-existing frames, another tactic is to locate surfaces on which there should be images, and occupy them with paint. Taking the example of the back cover of the MAY magazine, on which the advertising space had ultimately failed to find a taker, Sans titre (MAY), the surface left blank is seen as a kind of proto-palimpsest, calling for its covering.

Rodzielski's ability to reveal and permanently fix images finds a counterpoint in his production of precarious images. For every image saved from disappearance, the artist produces new ones whose fading is programmed. These may be images that serve as a background for a foreground, self-service compositions that are bound to scatter at the expense of the motif that initially unified them (Document 1), or drawings inserted in the free magazines distributed at gallery entrances. Through these gestures, Rodzielski conveys to visitors his concern for images, since the fate of these pieces will depend entirely on the attention paid to them by those who appropriate them.