The photography of Jean-Vincent Simonet (France, 1991) challenges the notion that digital printing processes preclude artistic gesture and interpretation. Familiar with machines — thanks to his family’s printing business — he has, in a sense, become a printer tuner, bending the accepted operating procedures to bring the mechanics into harmony with his work, which takes the form of a psychedelic symphony.
As a materialist photographer, he readily saturates the surface of his images with textures and colours, until the eye, in a state of visual breathlessness, carves a path through the whirlwind. His subject seems to devour the frame, to break through the surface of the paper; its contours often appear to dissolve into effects whose origin is not immediately apparent. In this quest for materiality, the flower has become a recurring motif in the artist’s compositions. It lends its organic and fleeting nature to the artist’s work on colour and surface: the stems and their plumes blend their patterns with those left by these fleeting inks, the blossoming of the corollas with a light that illuminates everything.
A graduate of the Lausanne School of Art, Jean-Vincent Simonet (born 1991) is based in Paris, where he combines commercial and editorial photography with personal projects. In 2022, he took part in Paris Photo’s Curiosa section with the project Heirloom, and in 2023 at the Salon a ppr oc he.
This lecture is part of the Écoute l’artiste series, organised by the Rouen Métropole Visual Arts Network. Lasting between one and one and a half hours, the talks are introduced and moderated by Tania Vladova, Professor of Aesthetics at ESADHaR – Rouen. Admission is free, and the events take place in the auditorium of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, 26 bis, rue Jean Lecanuet, 76000 Rouen.
Free, limited places available, booking required:
02 35 89 36 96
