Modern icons of Alexandre Arminjon, lights of a flickering world
Photographer of the Atacama desert, author of a series of portraits of the contemporary Iranian world and attached to the process of solarization offered by analog photography, Alexandre Arminjon presents today a surprising series of icons made of wood panels, gold leaf and photographic prints. These icons are mirrors inviting us to rethink the role of the image at a time when social medias are pouring out streams of snapshots that are as striking as ephemeral.
An alchemist photographer
To enter Alexandre Arminjon's studio is to immerse in the universe of an alchemist photographer. His creative space is inhabited by photographic prints that are hanging or enclosed in trays animated by strange bubble; sublime and disturbing machines with their cyclops-like optics and metallic powders contained in jars with esoteric labels. Not far from Nicolas Flamel's old house, Alexandre Arminjon's workshop is littered with wooden boards covered with metallic paints. Iron, copper and gold illuminate his panels which become the supports for cut out nailed prints. Hanging on the wall, these icons seem almost peaceful. The gold subjugates and the geometric patterns draw reassuring frames. However, everything is in tension. The circular arches that recall the round arches of Romanesque architecture contrast with the shots of modern facades whose grids trace out anguished squares. At the center of the icon appears a strangely familiar image: a politician, a movie star or a soccer player. Originating from social networks and the media, these photographs seem to have been first imprinted in our minds, which recognize in these transfigured prints the echo of a brutal and fleeting present.
A critical hagiography of our time
Alexandre Arminjon's works reveal our contemporary icons in an ambiguous light. We can distinguish the Kardashian family, the actor Leonardo Dicaprio, the new President of the United States, but also anonymous people who have become sadly famous, like the young Syrian Aylan Kurdi washed up on a beach, or a Trump supporter scorning the Capitol wearing ridiculous and tragic horns. Through his icons, the artist unveils a heterogeneous pantheon, while avoiding a moralizing or binary discourse. Like the nuances of analog photography, his world is contrasted and complex. The frozen smile of Mark Zuckerberg refers as much to the enviable success of a brilliant young man as to the perversity of a digital machine blinding its users. Themes are emerging: the superpower of the United States in a state of hubris, the Church in its ambivalence between charity and predation, but also fraud, whether fiscal or intellectual. Often, in a lower register, predellas enshrine smaller images offering a new reading. Thus appears the portrait of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, adjacent to the photograph of Prince Mohammed bin Salmane embracing President Macron. With the help of ingenious polyptychs, Alexandre Arminjon deploys a real narrative. In a large triptych, Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, himself a contested icon, invites us to watch the violence of the yellow vests. But where is the brutality; in the forces of order, among these yellow vests or in our worried and satisfied look to have momentarily escaped the crisis? Usually observed in aseptic museums or deserted churches, the icons that Alexandre Arminjon gives to see are disturbing. It is no longer about Christian saints but about us, and the viewer is not spared. These luxury products that underline the polarization of wealth are indeed those of our world.
Light as matter / as a material ?
Like Janus facing both the past and the future, these icons inscribed in our time summon a centuries-old tradition. Just as the sacredness of religious icons resides in the meticulousness of their realization, artworks of Alexandre Arminjon bear witness of the extreme care given to the paint whose multiple layers become thick, the careful application of gold leaves, the balance of the compositions and the materiality of the panels destined to go through time. As a photographer-plastician, he embodies in perennial works shots that are destined to disappear in a digital cloud. His work as an alchemist becomes a remedy. He fights against the transience of images that saturate our mental space, appearing continuously on these ugly grafts that are our cell phones. Because our time where the image dominates is also iconoclastic, it is no longer necessary to break statues or destroy paintings to erase faces. The dizzying speed with which information is released quickly makes the images that only yesterday aroused the indignation of all disappear. The icons that Alexandre Arminjon proposes invite to a meditation, they suspend time, or at least slow it down. With malice, the artist underlines that everything disappears, slowly the metals oxidize, the prints change tonality and the panels pass from hand to hand, getting patina with time. Only the gold remains. It reflects the light, the sunlight that allows photography, the light of an electrifying varnish or a candle that calls for a meditative reading. By basing himself on a living tradition, Alexandre Arminjon offers us with his icons an antidote to the ephemeral, an invitation to introspection.
Sébastien Cherruet, PhD in Art History from Sorbonne Université in Paris, is the curator of The Age of Profusion. He was the curator of the Charlotte Perriand exhibition at Fondation Louis Vuitton in 2019 and is co-head of cultural patronage for the LVMH group.