Yvan Salomone
Born in 1957 in Saint-Malo, France, where he lives and works.
You would think that Yvan Salomone’s work had all the right ingredients for the most banal regional scenario of picturesque, anecdotal art. But in Salomone’s case that never happened. He never fell for the quaint pleasures of the Sunday painter but began instead to explore the problematics of what we generally agree to call modernity. Salomone works to a program. A self-imposed one. He is like other contemporary artists who are aware that discipline is no longer imposed from outside (by the academy or patron) but produced by the work itself. His program is as follows :
1°) one watercolor per week, no more, no less
2°) each watercolour to be based on a photograph taken on-site (ports of St. Malo, Shanghai, Rotterdam)
3°) all watercolors the same size, 104 x 145 cm
4°) no human figures or sudden movements in the image.
These were the main guidelines and conventions.
They leave him free to explore what’s left : the play of invention, the meanders of poetics. Once properly framed and circumscribed, accidental effects can only be peaceful occurrences within a circular duration. Salomone works in a loop, a ring-shaped time frame. He dreams of a room in which all the walls (and even the ceiling) would be covered with his works, edge to edge. He cannot conceive of one of his watercolors standing alone. In exhibitions, he combines them in huge mural ensembles.
Salomone’s watercolors need to be read in at least two phases. At first, one notes the mass and poise of the hulls, the cold clarity of the presence of the containers. Then the drips and splatters come into view. The literal level of the image (a port with various machines) connects to a molecular one (these are blots, colors). The two work in phase, as if the water’s main task was to deposit surfaces and blocks, and that of the masses to dry out the pools. The image is played out in between the two. Salomone sees his own work as resisting much slower and more subtle medium of the watercolor.
Art Press n°288
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