Born in Vienna and raised in Stockholm by Swedish and Greek parents, Florence Montmare is an artist, photographer, and director whose creative search has drawn her across the globe. After graduating from Linnaeus University, Sweden, the International Center of Photography in New York, and working with fine art projects in Paris, New York, and Stockholm, Florence established her studio practice in New York and Sweden, mentored by artists Sam Samore and Deborah Turbeville.
The artist works with installation as a medium in itself. By working with light, movement and the fragmentary as entrances, she choreographs spaces for the viewer to enter their own personal visual world. The result is a sensory experience where a series of scripted events unfold. In painting with light, time and space merge, revealing luminous palettes. Most of Montmare’s work is process-based — often involving various collaborations — and an exploration where the boundaries between photography, painting, film, performance, poetry and sculpture are blurred, resulting in multi-faceted compositions that revolve around themes such as dreams, belonging, identity, memory, landscape, time and transience.
“I return to similar subjects, and the starting point is usually a specific site or place, where I stage different scenarios and fragmented tales that function as a catalyst for the viewer’s personal fantasies.”
Throughout her career, Montmare has explored numerous themes, such as the conditions of displacement and belonging (It Happens in the Meeting), the hopes and dreams of strangers (America Series), documenting time and memory (Illuminations), and the elemental conditions of landscape and figure (Scenes from an Island), notions of time geographies (Missed Connections), and the origin and nature of self, and its cycles (KRIΣ / return to sender).
Her monograph, America Series, was published by Damiani Books (Italy, 2023) and presented at Paris Photo, Fotografiska New York, and Barnes & Noble, and featured in The Guardian, ID Magazine, and L’Oeil de la Photographie, among other publications. Her second monograph, Scenes from an Island, was published by Kerber Verlag (Germany, 2024). Florence has been an artist-in-residence at the Institut Suédois, Paris; the Ingmar Bergman Estate, Sweden; the Chashama Studio Program, New York; and the Baltic Center for Writers, Sweden. She has exhibited at Fotografiska New York, Gotland Museum, Sweden, Casino Luxembourg, Saarlandmuseum, Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, Belgium, among other places. She makes photographs, films, installations, performances, and commissions, and is represented by Ivy Brown Gallery and Valerie Goodman.