Being the first artist in residence at Dalí’s house was a unique experience for Thomas Mailaender. Having always been fascinated by the artist's personality and the town of Cadaqués where he went as a teenager, the photographer found in Dalí's world a particular echo and complicity with his own universe. It is therefore with great creativity and enthusiasm that he has carried out this project: a photographic investigation that is as meticulous as it is quirky and unexpected, searching for the spirit of Dalí and surrealism.

Mailaender's connection with Dalí lies mainly in the artist's relationship with the vernacular: the painter's attachment to the village of Portlligat, his attention to objects and elements of his environment, and his way of collecting and transforming them in order to magnify them. It is therefore in search of traces that the photographer immersed himself, like an archaeologist, in the artist's personal archives. After collecting and documenting objects, the photographer selected those that best reminded him of Dalí's personal world, his art and his time, and of Cadaqués, in connection with his own artistic approach and experience of the town. 

The photographer's fascination with objects (art objects, everyday items, natural elements, oddities, trinkets, etc.), distorted and staged in order to monumentalize them, combines with his passion for using the photographic medium in diverse ways. In his work, Thomas Mailaender is used to varying mediums and techniques. He establishes protocols that he repeats identically several times, creating different typologies of images.
For this project, using Gold 200 film, ‘the film of holidays par excellence in the 70s-90s’, was a natural choice. Chosen by Mailaender for its warm, summery tones as a tribute to Cadaqués, it is also emblematic of the lifestyle of an era. Back in the days when the holiday photos were still printed on film, meticulously developed by the employees of Kodak factories. First sorted by hand, dipped in emulsion baths, dried, and examined on a light board, before being labeled and packaged to be sent to their happy owners... An obsolete process now, which the artist, nostalgic for the past, used as inspiration to create his images. 

Staged inside Dalí's house or in emblematic places in Portlligat, through association, superimposition, or crystallized by the sea salt of Cadaqués, the vernacular objects photographed by Mailaender seem to come to life, reviving the spirit of the artist and of surrealism. 

Mistakes sometimes occur in these images produced by repetitive processes: too much light entering the camera lens, a film forgotten on the beach and damaged by the sun, a negative accidentally dipped in a basin of seawater... As many technical accidents which the artist deliberately keeps track of in order to introduce a supernatural presence, as a tribute to the photographers of Spirit Photography (also called Ghost Photography) in the 19th century. Playing with the credulity of the general public towards technical progress in the early days of the photographic medium, these photographers played with natural camera artifacts such as flash reflecting off dust particles, the presence of a foreign object near the lens, or the reflection of the lens, to make people believe in the presence of ghosts in their images. Another source of inspiration the artist shares with Salvador Dalí.

At the end of this artistic residency, it is as if the photographer and the spirit of the late painter had become accomplices. Just as if a real encounter had taken place between these two collectors of images and objects, both fascinated by the game of error and chance. Through these images, Thomas Mailaender enters into an invisible, fanciful, and enigmatic dialogue with the ghost of Dalí, thwarting technique to trick us.

Text by Lily Lajeunesse