Agnès' “L'homme au gant” on show at Centre Pompidou Metz.
The photograph is currently on show at the Centre Pompidou Metz in the exhibition ‘Copistes’, in collaboration with Le Louvre. Talking about this image, Agnès recounts its genesis and inspiration, which she first saw at the Louvre a long time ago:
"My school in Versailles, the Cours Guflet, took us to the Louvre to look at the Mona Lisa. I must have been ten or eleven... In an earlier room, I paused for a long time, captivated by the mystery of the portrait of a young man looking off to his left, Titian's Man with a Glove. Having fallen in love with him, I caught up with my group, who had already moved far away. I went back to see him several times during my adolescence, because sometimes I missed him. I noticed his ungloved hand with its visible veins, his nonchalant attitude and the casualness with which he held the other glove in his gloved hand. I thought he had a rebellious air about him, in which I undoubtedly recognized myself. I think it was because he wasn't looking at me that I loved him so much. For a long time I knew nothing about him, only where he was. I only recently discovered that Louis XIV must have loved him too, since he had it in his collection at Versailles.
This off-camera gaze was very often found in works that moved, impressed and upset me, while the subjects of advertising stare at us intensely, with no other purpose than to seduce us, in spite of ourselves. I love this idea of the freedom of the subject, who has the right to look wherever he wants... The Mona Lisa is looking at us... and that's what people like too, her presence. But the off-field opens up the possibility of an elsewhere."
L'Homme au gant, 2025
Print on Canson Arche Velin 88 paper, 310 g, mounted on aluminum
100 x 89 x 0.5 cm
Copistes is on show at the Centre Pompidou Metz, in collaboration with Le Louvre, from June 14, 2025 to February 2, 2026.
