Born in Paris in 1953, a fellow traveller of the Bazooka group as founded by Kiki and Loulou Picasso, Romain Slocombe became known as a comic strip author and published a first bondage album, Prisoner of the Red Army, While bandaging women - Japanese women students at first, and now young ladies from the French upper middle class - the Artist develops an aesthetics of upheaval, of which J.G. Ballard became the cult writer.
By choosing his models in a society which is highly restricted by behaviour codes, Romain reacts to constraints by elaborating new constraints. It seems that young ladies from the elegant districts of Paris now embody in the eyes of Romain Slocombe this same imminent disappearance.
Behind these photographs, Romain Slocombe manipulates symbols, fairy tales and fantasies. This his worried and fascinated audience onyl dimly perceives. It is on this thin but taut line that these pictures dramatically change from an (extra)ordinary depravity to a practical experience in Art. For the true question raised by this work is not to wonder why these women consent to sit for him. What is it that Romain Slocombe tries to protect himself from by taking pictures of them ? How comes it we feel this is Art and not only a fetishistic hobby ?With Romain Slocombe we are faced with a lack of understanding of what the photographic object is and how ambiguous it is.
The Exhibition presents two series of colour photographies :
In Clara et Célia Romain Slocombe explores a new universe. Just as highly coded as Japan, with its muffled upper middle class and good-mannered young ladies, it opens new territories to the Artist.Wearing plaster as though bearing a child, these European women, with their bodies not so graphic as that of their Japanese counterparts, and embodying suspiciously wounded madonnas, bring us back to the origins of painting. There again plaster becomes a metaphor for a decaying, confined and doomed universe.
In Tokyo Blue Romain Slocombe's wanderings suddenly take on a dreamier appearance. A blue and hazy light coats and isolates the young women. It is as though the Artist had henceforth decided to stay at a distance from his model. Together with the Exhibition a rare book will be published : Medical Love, a screenprint, with a limited number of 100.
« La photographie sans cesse revient à la lancinante question de ce qu'elle montre et de ce qu'elle dérobe »
Bernard Lamarche-Vadel
Né à Paris en 1953, compagnon de route du groupe Bazooka fondé par Kiki et Loulou Picasso, Romain Slocombe est passé par la BD et s'est fait connaître avec un premier album de bondage, Prisonnière de l'Armée rouge, qui fit scandale. En bandant des femmes - hier étudiantes japonaises, aujourd'hui de la bourgeoisie française - l'artiste développe une esthétique du séisme et de l'accident dont J.G. Ballard s'est fait l'écrivain culte.
En choisissant ses modèles dans une société ultracodifiée, Romain répond à la contrainte par l'élaboration d'une autre contrainte. Il semble que les jeunes femmes des quartiers chics de Paris incarnent aujourd'hui aux yeux de Rom...