[…] Yvan Salomone is one of the few artists who currently bases his work on the intuition of a deep kinship between the two techniques (painting and photography). Oil, bitumen and turpentine, which were the basis for so-called plenary painting, are often coating materials, whereas watercolour can be light blood or tear water, as is the revealing bath of traditional photography, which August Strindberg liked to compare to the sea, full of sodium chloride, sulfates and magnesium.

This is the lustral seawater that Yvan Salomone (who lives in Saint-Malo) swims in every day, winter and summer, essentially to receive a daily unction and pardon from the medium he collaborates with in painting. Watercolour is a very demanding medium, which requires technical mastery but also respect for accidents, patience and precision: the water dries quicker than oil, but still slower than one would like, and does not allow for any correction or repentance once it evaporates, leaving the imprint of its pigment on the surface of the paper.

“You’re delusional”, the reader may cry! It’s possible, certainly, but ritual is a fundamental dimension of Salomone’s work. Since 1991, the artist has fixed himself a Benedictine rule (the sea bathing ceremony gives an idea of his capacity for discipline!) which he never strays from, except when he travels: large watercolours emerge from his studio in succession, always in the same format, mostly inspired by industrial sites or deserted ports, or by a no man’s land (in the literal sense – no human figure is ever present in Salomone’s work, like in Eugène Atget’s) of a land forgotten – or rather devastated – by modernity.

Each plate has an immatriculation number, or an inventory number, a title made up of eleven letters, often a portmanteau word that Salomone, an avid reader of Finnegans Wake and Ulysses, is fond of, and is accompanied, practically in secret, not by a caption or comment, but by a secular prayer, as beautiful as it is hermetic […]

Extract adapted from the text of Didier Semin, “Peindre au-dessous du barrage”, Yvan Salomone catalogue, Déluge & retrait, Ed. Frac Bretagne, 2018, p. 500-502

Yvan Salomone was born in 1957 at Saint-Malo where he lives and works.

His work was exhibited at numerous European institutions such as Centre Pompidou (Paris), Mac Val (Musée d’art contemporain du Val de Marne), Cité de l’architecture (Paris), Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Strasbourg, La Criée – Centre d’art contemporain (Rennes), Mamco (Geneva), Witte de With (Rotterdam), Musée de la Chaux-de-Fonds (Switzerland), FRAC…

In 2018, the FRAC Bretagne (Rennes) dedicated a large personnal exhibition to his work « Déluge et retrait », featuring more then 170 watercolours, accompanied by the book of the same title.

The Mamco in Geneva edited a series of books dedicated to Yvan Salomone’s work. The book «Zoneblanche» brings together the watercolours realised between 1996 and 2006, and the book « Le point d’Ithaque », published in 2010, features the texts by Yvan Salomone corresponding to each watercolour from the same period. The catalogue « Évaporations » includes the works from 2006 to 2016.

Yvan Salomone’s works are part of many public and private collections including Centre Pompidou, FMAC, Mac Val (Musée d’art contemporain du Val de Marne), les FRAC Bretagne, Haute Normandie, PACA, Picardie, Limousin, Poitou-Charentes, Île-de-France, Auvergne, Pays de la Loire, Languedoc-Roussillon, Fonds Municipal de la Ville de Paris, Collection Société Générale, MAMCO (Geneva), Museu Colecçao Berardo (Lisbon), Witte de With (Rotterdam).