Photographer Kourtney Roy and composer Mathias Delplanque, winners of the Prix Swiss Life à 4 mains for this immersive work combining image and sound, continue their tour of France.
For its 6th edition, the Prix Swiss Life à 4 mains, organized every two years by the Swiss Life Foundation, has rewarded Last Paradise. As usual, since its inception in 2014, the winners have benefited from high visibility at the heart of an exhibition route in Paris and the regions. In the summer of 2024, the artist duo presented this imaginary road trip at the Aire d'Arles during the Rencontres de la photographie.
In 2025, they continue their tour of France. Last February, Last Paradise was exhibited at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. This spring, it's the turn of the Villa Pérochon in Niort to showcase it. It will then make a stop at the Art Rock festival in Saint-Brieuc, for a first-ever live performance, and close its tour at the Jeu de Paume in the Château de Tours. Lovers of sound and image can also look forward to a beautiful photographic book and 45 rpm vinyl, published by Editions Filigranes.
Paradise Lost
With Last Paradise, the Canadian artist returns to the world of still images, after having signed her first feature film, Kryptic, presented at the SXSW festival in Austin in 2024. With no time to spare, she plunges us into a visual and aural odyssey in the heart of Rimini, a small Italian seaside town on the Adriatic coast. The perfect setting for a haunting, ghostly stay in the off-season.
Kourtney Roy continues to enjoy crafting cinematic autofictions, where the ordinary and raw reality compete with the absurd and the dreamlike. Here, she plays a whimsical character, flanked by saucy wigs and stylish vintage dresses, who goes about her business as strangely and bizarrely as the location dictates.
Her scenes of beaches, streets, tourist sites and dilapidated architecture are devoid of any human presence. And she appears as the last woman on Earth, lost in a space-time. Through this portfolio saturated in pastel colors, Kourtney Roy also continues to demonstrate her love for the urban landscapes of Stephen Shore, the imagination of David Lynch and the glossy, phantasmagorical humor of Guy Bourdin.
Bold fusion
Last Paradise then earns its stripes as a ballad and visual wanderer thanks to Mathias Delplanque's soundtrack. The Ouagadougou-born, Nantes-based composer has produced some 40 albums and sound creations for dance, theater and film. Here, he has conceived a veritable sonic space combining hybrid tonalities, psychedelic sounds and offbeat pop.
The score embarks us to the rhythm of vintage synthesizers "made in Rimini" from the 1970s, drawing on giallo and Z series music, easy listening and Balearic disco. Into this melodious cocktail, he adds sound effects (waves, birdsong, clicking heels), creating a steamy version as if straight out of the "jukebox of an abandoned club".
Last Paradise is a compelling, immersive artistic experience that blends sound and image, surrealism and melancholy. The Kourtney Roy / Mathias Delplanque duet works wonderfully, transporting us to an ultimate elsewhere, where everything seems both possible and vain.
Last Paradise
Prix Swiss Life 4 mains 2024-2025
Villa Pérochon, Niort, from April 5 to May 25, 2025
Festival Art Rock, Saint-Brieuc, live performance on June 7, 2025
Jeu de Paume - Château de Tours, June 20 to September 20, 2025
