MALE NUDES
Read the interview of Isabelle Bonzom by journalist Maïa Mazaurette on the artist's male nudes, published by GQ.
What is tender, fragile and delectable in a man’s body
"Isabelle Bonzom’s paintings convey a sense of health, solidity and sturdiness, as well as an appetite for life that run counter to the dramatic vision of sickly and suffering flesh with which we are too often presented. Isabelle invites us to look differently at the image that unites flesh and meat, an image that she translates with legible lines and outlines and with frank flat surfaces of colors. Her research leads to a vision of the male nude that no other artist, in particular no other female artist, has ever dared to express. Hers is a lucid look of jubilation that manages to render, both with modesty and boldness, what is tender, fragile and delectable in a man’s body, when that body dares to surrender and accepts to be looked at without the conventional attitudes that aim to extol the conquering virility", writes art historian and collector Marie-France Braeckman
Above and below, 2 videos presenting paintings and drawings by Isabelle Bonzom, drawn from series of male nudes created between 1994 and 2003, watercolor or crayons/paper and oil/canvas.
According to art critic and doctor in art history, Eurydice Trichon-Milsani, Isabelle Bonzom's paintings evoke a disturbing flesh full of vital energy :
"Bodies alone. Sprawling, sitting, falling backwards, taking the pose of Mantegna’s Jesus-Christ, they are here like targets in an empty space, their heads missing, out of the frame of the image... Silky envelope, bared and vivid flesh, put side by side, weave a dialogue in a troubling way"
In Isabelle Bonzom's painting, the general and recurring theme of the flesh is a possible metaphor for the painting as the body of the image.
After her series of Males Nudes of 1994-2002, Isabelle Bonzom painted lots of lush landscapes, where lovers, strollers, runners or busy people melt into their environment. The palette's expanded in diverse nuances of vivid colors. Step by step, a new series of nudes appeared in 2007, entitled "Confusions". Superimpositions are treated in transparencies that question the viewer: is there one body in motion or several? The viewer projects or makes out an embrace.
