Dominique Renson is a French artist. She lives and works mainly in Paris, but also in New York, Detroit and the island of Lipsi. In 2002 Jean Jacques Aillagon named her Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.
It was during a trip to Australia in 1989 that Dominique Renson decided to become a painter. In the city of Broom, she often went for drinks to the Animal’s Bar where mostly Aborigines would hang out. She started sketching and photographing her new friends and ended up creating large format paintings. More than just portraits, their faces are a pretext to address her obsession with death, sexuality and marginalization.
Ceremonie mainly presents portraits of the artist’s friends. Most of them are presented on a black background, in a significant way. The use of black or a solid colour as a backdrop, as Le Fifre de Manet teaches, removes any context and forces the eye to look more closely at the figure, which appears to be suspended in the air.