Yvan Salomone

Xippas ParisXippas Punta del Este

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

In 1991, Yvan Salomone set the framework of his practice and devoted himself to watercolor painting by composing on identical formats. A name for each work thus embodies a regular rhythm of production. He paints in his studio based on preliminary photographs taken from the four corners of the planet. He doesn’t reproduce the photographs in his works, but liberally interprets them; these images being just a visual starting point.

Thus the representation of raw materials (containers, cement, steel, etc.) conflicts with the lightness of the watercolors and undergoes a metamorphosis to create the singular nature of his compositions. The massive lines of a container ship or the rusty cylinders of heavy barrels allow him the opportunity not only to free the energy inside these massive objects, but also to give them a voice, without relieving them of their functions. Yvan Salomone shows what speaks, but purifies it, synthesizes it, and transforms it – he leaves the meaning ambiguous, allusive, and open. Yvan Salomone’s landscapes defend reality and claim a poetic dematerialization of it, and impose themselves on the viewer like suspended spaces.

Yvan Salomone’s work was exhibited at several European institutions such as the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, Mac Val, Cité de l’architecture, 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), and various FRAC, to name a few.

Public and private collections (selection): Centre Pompidou, FMAC, Mac Val, FRAC Bretagne, Haute Normandie, PACA, Picardie, Limousin, Poitou-Charentes, Île-de-France, Auvergne, Pays de la Loire, Languedoc-Rousillon, Fonds Municipal de la Ville de Paris, Collection Société Générale, MAM- CO, Museu Coleçao Berardo (Lisbon), and Witte de With (Rotterdam).