With the precision of an entomologist preparing a collection of specimens for study, since the 1980s Yves Trémorin has developed a methodical rigour in his procedures and processes, isolating his subjects in a fragmentary way. Removed from any contextual, spatial or temporal clues, freed from any anecdotes, they become, in his extremely ascetic image, more like emblems, mythological figures or symbolic objects.
The series Les amants magnifiques is an exception in this artist’s work. If he often used his close relatives as subjects (as in the series Poupig, Tribu & Nature Morte, Cette femme là, La mère or even Néon Boy), he scrutinised them by removing any subjective or emotional investment from the sphere of intimacy.
In this group of fourteen photographs produced in 1989, he goes into love, Eros and a sudden action becoming sentimental and carnal. A couple entwined – the photographer and his wife- changing, their eyes half-closed. The pictures only have enough space for their tangled bodies, heavy in the flesh and yet heavenly, since the gaze sends them tumbling, upside-down, defying the laws of gravity. They are an echo of the iconography of Immaculate Conceptions and ecstatic Virgins. It is indeed ecstatic: the lovers are in a state of grace, out of this world, absorbed in themselves, orgiastic and timeless. The group produces the dizzying feeling of convulsive ebb and flow where the lovers ceaselessly seem to lose and find each other, shipwrecked and swallowed up in the image.
Since June 22nd the series Les amants magnifiques is a new addition to the permanent collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes. It has not been shown in France since the D’ar ger exhibition in Rennes in 1991, which showed the works of the Noir Limite group (which Yves Trémorin formed along with Jean-Claude Bélégou et Florence Chevallier).
Caroline Bénichou
Caroline Benichou is an author and exhibition curator specialising in photography. She lives and works in Paris.
Yves Trémorin, Les amants magnifiques
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes
20 Quai Emile Zola
35000 Rennes
France
To see more about the work of Yves Trémorin : http://ddab.org/en/textes/TREMORIN
