With his photographs, Jean Yves Cousseau invites us to enter into the details of the world. He confronts us with a certain reality blunt and tangible. His new series Quoi qu'il en soit... presented at Orbis pictus are staged in singular diptychs whose images are repeated and linked to unfold a story that is often intimate, sometimes familial, always modest despite the very explicit details. Thanks to a perfect mastery of the process of oxidation, the images become timeless after the chemicals take effect over time.
Jean Yves Cousseau transforms his photographs, erasing any notion of temporality in order not to risk being confined to a nostalgic posture. He chooses to flay all his photographs and to oxidize many of these prints. Subjected to this assault, the photographs undergo metamorphoses that reinforce or alter the meanings they carry: rust, stains and scratches are inscribed on them, reviving them by instilling a new memory and contributing to the work’s reflection of time.
For the artist, photography is not only recording reality but working upon the medium. Isn't this an approach worthy of a contemporary ecologist who is devoted to his environment?
Like the photographic impression, these images of the artist with their evocative and poetic titles remain engraved in our memory without our being able locate them in space and time.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a book co-edited by art3 Plessis Editions and Orbis pictus, enriched with poems by Alain Madeleine-Perdrillat, especially composed for his long-time friend, and an afterword by Gaëlle Périot-Bled, who knows how to define all the facets of the oxidation with subtlety and precision.
Photography and poetry will cross paths throughout the month of June at the Orbis pictus gallery, for a unique artistic voyage.