MEAT
From 199O to 2003, Isabelle Bonzom has painted, mostly from life, a series of Meat, while she painted a series of Male nudes and another about Smiles.
These three iconographic subjects are linked with the main concern of Isabelle Bonzom's painting which is the flesh seen as a possible metaphor for the painting as the body of the image.
"Those membra disjecta offered to our sight do not reproach us for being accomplices to the cruelty of the slaughterhouse. Nothing of the cadaver here, but the radiance of the flesh that has become imputrescible.
Nothing, neither, that calls for the fork and knife, but a pure shine, a raw glory which calls for an outlook enamored of truth and organization.
All the beauty of the world is there: perfect distinction, ingenuity of production, radiant depth... No bloodiness, but a measured and restrained appearance. The short rib fleetingly looms up into our visual field, as an epiphany. Is it going to enter the canvas and disappear for ever? The triad of a dark night, a red and white short rib and a pool of light seems to emerge from a unique moment", writes philosopher Baldine Saint Girons about Isabelle Bonzom's series of Meat
"Silky envelope, bared and vivid flesh, put side by side, weave a dialogue in a troubling way", writes art critic Eurydice Trichon-Milsani about Isabelle Bonzom's painting.
Art critic Pierre Sterckx says during a conversation with Isabelle Bonzom, published in the catalogue "Le vif du sujet/The Heart of the matter" in 2006:
"Your series of meats and bodies are one of the important vectors in everything you paint. Your painting is very sanguine and carnal: there are ochers, reds, something reminiscent of blood and flesh, yet not expressionist or lacking substance. Indeed, painting meat as you do is not mortiferous, it’s the contrary of a sad passion. You deal with a certain type of body, with flesh which is not what we might think because we have lost our sense of carnality"