Gallery FIFTY ONE TOO is pleased to present Sunset Ketchup, the first solo exhibition by Romain Laprade at the gallery and in Belgium, running from May 29 to July 12, 2025.
Evoking a sense of stillness and unexpected charm, Romain Laprade's photographs invite the viewer to pause and reflect on the overlooked beauty of everyday spaces. With a keen eye for design and an architectural sensibility, Laprade creates work where instinct meets precision, where the ordinary is transformed into something remarkable.
The title of the exhibition, both poetic and surprising, encapsulates the artist's world: Sunset Ketchup juxtaposes the soft, contemplative image of the sunset with the almost playful, surreal notion of the red condiment. This deliberate dissonance mirrors the subtle balance in his images: between abstraction and reality, between graphic rigor and light strangeness, between structure and sensitivity.
Hailing from Limoges and now living in Paris, Romain Laprade honed his visual language through his experience in graphic design and publishing. This background can be seen in the clarity of his compositions, where every detail is carefully considered. In his photographs, architecture takes on a cinematic quality, light shapes the space, and emptiness adds depth. Though his work is devoid of human figures, their presence is always implied through the spaces they leave behind.
Laprade’s photography focuses on the unnoticed: a sunlit wall, a quiet staircase, a closed window, or a forgotten corner. He isolates these often overlooked elements, transforming them into powerful visual narratives that suggest rather than document. His work invites the viewer to step into a world where time stands still, and the simplest moments resonate with unexpected significance.
While deeply rooted in a graphic and architectural approach, his work also carries subtle echoes of cinema. Some photographs recall, through their precise composition or delicate colour palette, the stylized worlds of certain filmmakers. But these references are more like a distant hum — an undercurrent linking the decor, the scene, and the suspension of narrative.
Sunset Ketchup is not a story, but a visual rhythm. A series of images that engage with each other, leading the viewer through a quiet, introspective exploration of light, space, and simplicity. The exhibition offers a chance to reimagine the familiar, allowing the everyday to unfold in new and surprising ways. Slowly, the photographs turn into fragments of memory—timeless, placeless, and yet profoundly familiar.
In Sunset Ketchup, Romain Laprade invites us into a world of silence, light, and stillness. His work does not demand attention, but gently encourages us to see the world differently, to feel its subtleties, and to discover the quiet strangeness that surrounds us each day.
Artists: Romain Laprade