Ovidius, 2021

Aperture is pleased to collaborate with the artist Viviane Sassen on a series of unique limited-edition prints on the occasion of the publication of her limited-edition artist book Venus & Mercury. The acclaimed Dutch photographer collaborated with legendary book designer Irma Boom to offer a fresh and radical vision of the Palace of Versailles. A storied site of history, opulence, and political power, Versailles has long captured the imagination of both the public and many acclaimed photographers. In 2018, Sassen was invited by Versailles to make a series of photographs throughout its vast grounds. For six months, she was given free rein—often after official hours, when the buildings were empty—to wander and photograph the palace’s extravagant gardens, gilded Baroque interiors, and even Marie Antoinette’s private correspondence. Drawn to the bodies represented in the palace’s many marble statues, Sassen creates hybrid forms that play with notions of sexuality and gender and call to mind traditions of Surrealist art. For this special limited-edition offering, the artist works with one of the photographs she made during her time at Versailles and intervenes with each print—painting each in vivid color and abstract form, rendering it a unique object.

Digital C-Print on Gloss Paper Painted with Acrylic Varnish
15.7 x 23.2 inches / 40 x 60 centimeters
Special edition with Aperture: 12 and 2 Artist’s Proofs, each unique

Viviane Sassen (b. 1972, Amsterdam, The Netherlands) studied fashion design and photography at the Utrecht School of the Arts and Ateliers Arnhem, The Netherlands. A retrospective of seventeen years of her fashion work, In and Out of Fashion, opened at Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography, Amsterdam, in 2012, traveling extensively thereafter. Sassen was included in the main exhibition of the 55th Venice Biennale, The Encyclopedic Palace, in 2013. She was awarded the Dutch art prize Prix de Rome in 2007, and an International Center of Photography Infinity Award in 2011. In 2015, Sassen won the German Photography Academy’s David Octavius Hill Medal and was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize for her exhibition Umbra. She has also received numerous awards for her many publications.