ISABELLE BONZOM
TRAVERSES 2014
The Marie-Claude Duchosal gallery presents
TRAVERSES
Isabelle Bonzom’s paintings
Exhibition in October 2014
Read the article written by the American writer, Kathy Borrus, in the Fearless Traveler
On October 10, 2014, « Color in Isabelle Bonzom’s painting : a feast for the eye and the mind »,
a lecture by Arlette Sérullaz, honorary director of the Musée Eugène Delacroix and curator at the Louvre.
Galerie Marie-Claude Duchosal - 1 rue Ferdinand Duval, 75004 Paris
« In Isabelle Bonzom’s jubilation with the visceral act of creating, one senses that new pictorial territories are being opened to her and by her, » says the art historian Vincent Cristofoli. Indeed, for her, the painting is a body living and sensual, a space for reflection and experimentation. Her painting is altogether grave and jubilatory, tonic and savory as it suggests and reveals. It is about relationships, it is based on networks of pictorial layers, vivid chromatic relations, overflows of fluids, and gushes.
« A world perpetually gushing created by some Danaë? I want to know why Isabelle Bonzom paints those snowflake shaped dabs that make one feel the brush hurrying down, perhaps toward a final dissolution... We are at this exquisite, delicious, frightening point where gravity takes over gravitas, » writes Annette Smith, art collector and Emeritus Professor of Literature at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
« It is a paradox. The rift that occurs when the conflicts between the inside and the outside of our lives are made visible. You seem to be saying to me, through the vision of your painting, “If you see a leaf on fire, could you understand love? If you see trees explode with the force of a waterfall but burn hot with desire would you finally realize that love has consumed you? ”, » writes American artist Eric Fischl in his text about Isabelle Bonzom entitled “Entre nous” (Between us).
Eunju Park, curator and writer for Art Price South Korea, adds « Isabelle Bonzom’s painting recharges our batteries with spiritual energy and vitality. For her, an important aim of art is to reconcile human beings with their sensuality and environment, to heal psychological, emotional and spiritual wounds as well as to provide food for thought and meditation. Part of her work is to welcome the good energies and let them circulate within the painting ».
On his side, Pierre Sterckx, art critic at Beaux-Arts Magazine, says that « Isabelle Bonzom has developed themes as varied as urban forests, meats and nudes, but the invariant thread is her concern with incarnation. She paints the fluid evolution of the flesh, the turmoil of bodies and their passages ». Of particular importance to the artist is the way that those themes are dealt with and transformed by the painting which, itself, reacts and undergoes metamorphoses with every series or even every picture.
For her part, art critic and psychologist Paola Cocchi notes that « Isabelle Bonzom’s painting is always on the edge, giving a feeling of vertigo as regards the perception of images.» For instance, in 2012, the artist launched a series in which the soldier of World War I coexists with the contemporary urban landscape, creating a stunning ensemble. In her current series « Camouflage », she paints portraits of friends, among them that of her colleague, painter and sculptor Eric Fischl. Portrayed in natural environments, their faces are hidden by the shadows or tree foliage, as if disfigured.
Museum curator Colin Lemoine, also an art critic with Le Journal des Arts and L’œil magazine, notes that « Isabelle Bonzom knows the fragility as much as the greatness of the decisive moment, its charge of unknown as well as its universal discretion. Here, a crossroads populated by solitude; there, a street inhabited by anonymous people; here, a glimpse of a tree, there, a probable shadow. Everything melts and is in tune with everything. Everything seems necessary and evident, as if the world, at last, was seeing itself being put into words, into forms. Things make sense ».
Isabelle Bonzom earned a Doctorate in painting, art and art history from the École Régionale des Beaux-Arts of Rennes (Brittany) and completed three years of post-graduate studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts of Paris. She has been exhibiting her work and working on site since 1987. The Museum of Saint-Maur (near Paris) gave her carte blanche for a solo show in 1992, so did the Museum of Noirmoutier (Western France) in 1996. The French Ministries of Justice and Culture jointly commissioned Isabelle Bonzom for an ensemble of 30 mural paintings at the Jailhouse of Saint-Malo, on the coast of Brittany, in 2000. Art critic Pierre Sterckx chose to show her painting in the Jouvences (Jubilations) group show he curated in 2010 at the Château d'Ardelay (Western France), an unprecedented event that also gathered for the first time works by major figures of contemporary art like Tony Cragg, Christopher Wool and Julie Mehretu. In Paris, the galleries d’Est & d’Ouest, Peirce and Boissière-Gomendio have organized personal exhibits of her work from 2007 to 2013. Since 2007, she has joined a prestigious group of contemporary artists whose work has been selected by UNESCO Editions, including American painter Wayne Thiebaud and British artist Howard Hodgkin. In Seoul, South Korea, her artwork was shown at the 1-2-3 Gallery. In the United States, she participated in New York City in the Zona Red Hook Art Show in 2007 and in Take Home a Nude (NYAA/Sotheby’s) in 2012. This year, she participates in The Selfie Show at the Museum of New Art (Detroit). Isabelle Bonzom’s painting have been presented also in contemporary art fairs such as Art Brussels (2005 and 2006), Art London (2008) and Art Élysées (2012). Besides her personal research as an artist, she has lectured in Paris at the National Museum of Modern Art (Pompidou Center), as well as in Washington at the National Gallery of Art and in New York, at the New York Academy of Art and at Baruch College - City University of New York upon the invitation of art historian Gail Levin. Paintings by Isabelle Bonzom are held by public collections in France and by private collectors and corporations in France, England, Belgium, Costa Rica, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, the United States, etc. Read more in Bio & CV
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