From September 14 until October 28, 2023, the GNG Gallery will host the exhibition “Planches contact”, a highlight of the aesthetic approach of Maurice Renoma, artist, and the creative impulse that accompanies his whole life.

Gilles Naudin presents an original project, designed to investigate the origins of the artist’s creative process and the many facets of his personality.

If the artistic act begins with the intention, it is through the look and the choice that the author has on his drafts that we discover the creative process. Maurice Renoma opens his archives and exhibits for the first time his contact sheets, containing the snapshots of the beginning of his photography practice. This journey in search of its aesthetics becomes for the spectator the reading of real visual notebooks.

The strength of photography arises from the fusion between poetry and reality: Maurice Renoma stages the unknown, experiments without setting limits and likes to be surprised by the results, in a position of rebellious mind and impervious to collective norms and values. Presenting a spontaneous and highly inventive character, he designs a universe for his own use from his own impulses.

PRESS KIT - Planches Contact

PHOTOS RATÉES

(FAILED PHOTOS)

Photos taken without intention or reflection, accidents of the present.

His failed photos were not designed to become artistic objects. They are accidents, missed takes that are sometimes the genesis of accomplished works of his career.

These first images capture the movements of life, shadows and bodies. His gesture is automatic and intimate, dedicated to capture the noise of existence, the form of emotions, the dimension of missed acts: the blurs created preserve the mystery of individuals and erase the boundaries between fiction and reality, shadow and light, perversions and virtues.

The human body is at the center of its early years of experimentation, marked by a particular interest for the characters.

Sometimes taken out of context and rendered in an almost cinematic setting; the images are imbued with sensuality and explore the details of a garment on the body, capturing the charm of a lost gaze or an intimate ritual.

We could call it intimate photography, in which the subjects were photographed in “stolen” situations, in the moments before and after the real pose. They are spontaneous images captured in the movement of life, preserving the mystery of the individuals and subtracting nothing from the grace or the harshness of the moment.