Robert Mapplethorpe Intérieur Jour
curated by Jean-Marc Bustamante

Adding another chapter to a series of exhibitions aimed at rediscovering a lesser-known aspect of Robert Mapplethorpe’s work, Thaddaeus Ropac is pleased to invite Jean-Marc Bustamante to express his personal view of the American photographer. Through a selection of works that explore a more intimate facet of his photography, Intérieur Jour emphasises a delicate and discreet approach to the photographic model.
 

Placed on two shelves that occupy the entire length of the second floor gallery, a set of portraits in various formats makes up a display that recalls a domestic setting, like a family album of familiar faces.

'It is these moments that I have brought together in an intimate space of the gallery. The viewer becomes the recipient, the stakeholder, the protector of this intimacy created by the artist for rare and timeless works, imbued with a great humanity.' — Jean-Marc Bustamante.

The choice is not related to the identity of the people but rather to the community they constitute, which, through its diversity, draws a portrait of the artist. Some belong to a socio-cultural elite, others are part of the New York underground and then there are the children of both. All of them are characterised by a relaxed attitude and by a particular play of light, which underline their humanity. Rather than the sculptural beauty of the athletic bodies that have so often been emphasised, the aim here is to let the determination of a look, the fragility of a moment and reverie speak for themselves.

Guided by his own practice, which is nourished by photography, Jean-Marc Bustamante reflects on the de-hierarchisation of the image that thwarts what we already know about Mapplethorpe, his search for perfection and his obsession with 'the beautiful image'. Photographs of empty space, with light passing through them, accompany this gallery of portraits like counter-fields that introduce an absence, a screen. These views of interiors in which nothing is revealed except the architecture of the space itself, are indeed, through the diffusion of light, invitations to develop one’s own eye as a spectator.

Photographed in their intimate domestic space, the portraits of adults reveal a vulnerability far removed from the dramatic tension of studio portraits. Sitting on her sofa, Stella Astor (1976) looks defiantly into the lens, while the portrait of Francesca Thyssen (1981) catches her in a moment of abandon. Mapplethorpe believed that he had to have the consent of the people he photographed and once said that children were the most difficult subject to photograph: 'You can’t control them. They never do what you want them to do.' These were mostly children of friends like Sarabelle Miller - the daughter of gallery owner Robert Miller, or the niece of Milton Moore - one of his favorite models. These images capture their innocence but also their confidence and their sense of playfulness.