Yves Trémorin

Contemporary photography, should it not seek to shape itself in the power of the moment but, rather, with a deliberate awareness of the anachronism of the symbol, has the ability to replay, reactivate and update any or almost any mode of representation, including the oldest. Trémorin makes use of an ancient power of meaning: that of the emblem. He does this without any sign of nostalgia for historical forms and languages. Trémorin achieves this emblematic register through careful and meticulous work, taking great care to remain faithful to the principle of economy that has long governed his artistic career. This economy is not to be understood in the sense of a reduction of technical means, in the sense that the artist does not eschew any of them and regularly redefines them, to the point of sophistication if needed. The question here is that of the economy of time it takes for contemporary images to make sense, and of the economy of their interpretation. Instead of the descriptive, allusive, or emotional functions often favoured in the commerce of images, Trémorin prefers workings that are closer to symbolism. From his black and white portraits from the 1980s (Cette femme-là [That woman] series [1983-84], for instance) to his work with video (We Others, 1997-98, three films), as well as his Natures mortes (Still lifes, set of 34 pictures [1993]), he mostly gravitates towards figures that present themselves as symbols. However, he does not use the descriptive dimension of photography to portray a shared and experienced reality of the world, but rather to examine the figure well beyond the appearance of the object, of the body in its details, or of the snippet of everyday life, whether captured on a kitchen table or among children’s toys: in each of these fragments of the world, the artist seeks to bring out the intense and loaded evidence of the symbolic potency that characterises the emblem.

Excerpt from L’emblématique Trémorin, by Christophe Domino, in the catalogue “Images au Centre 05”, Le Point du Jour, 2005.