DELICIOUS GRAVITY |
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"Tumbling Woman, II" by Eric Fischl and "Cascade, IX" by Isabelle Bonzom were presented at the Jouvences show. |
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From
May 22 to August 29, 2010, the City of Les Herbiers, in Vendée,
western France, presented an unprecedented exhibition
“Although our show gathers artists of various generations and styles, all those artists have one thing in common: a rejection of the prevailing morosity. All reflect a vitalist contemporary art that is an art provoking intensely lived perceptions. Faced with the death wish that surrounds us, "Jouvences" does not, however, oppose it with a superficial hedonistic euphoria, for there is gravity in the joy that is shown in this exhibit”, wrote Pierre Sterckx Among
the 23 artists of different nationalities selected by Pierre Sterckx
was Isabelle Bonzom. In 2003, she already had a solo show at the Ardelay
Castle. Curated by David Rautureau, that exhibit was a retrospective
of her work featuring around 70 paintings. For the Jouvences show, Pierre
Sterckx's choice focused on recent paintings from her Cascade
series. |
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Pierre Sterckx wrote: “Isabelle Bonzom has developed over two decades themes as varied as urban architectures, urban forests, subway systems, meats and nudes. But the invariant thread woven through all her work is her concern with incarnation. How to incarnate the movement of life and intensity of the flesh? More precisely, Isabelle Bonzom paints the fluid evolution of the flesh, the turmoil of bodies and their passages. She extends a quest that started with Caravaggio and Gentileschi and continued with Chardin and Bonnard.”
On
June 4, Isabelle Bonzom was invited by David Rautureau, director of
the Ardelay Castle, to lecture at the Jouvences exhibit. For her talk,
she chose the following title: Delicious gravity, jubilation in art
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Isabelle
Bonzom explains that the title of the talk came from a text about her
work by Annette Smith, art collector and Emeritus Professor of Literature
at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech): |
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| The artist recalls her talk: "The talk "Delicious gravity" was the first time that I talked to a large audience in such an intimate tone but at the same moment with the purpose of testifying as an artist during a collective exhibit which was the extension of a general point of view, the one of the curator. The title of the show, "Jouvences", could be translated by " Jubilations". The exhibition was about vitalism in the creative process. My aim was to testify about the way I live art and about the way I paint what I paint, in a society which puts the emphasis on "sad passions", a negative vision of the body and of the painting considered as a dead thing. How to jubilate, how to continue to create in this context? Looking
at my paintings of lush landscapes, some people talk about a rejoicing
and a loving vision. Some viewers feel that behind these vigorous images
of "Cascades", for instance, a sense of catastrophy is hidden.
I think both feelings are there. This complexity interests me. |
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I'm aware and concerned by danger and dramas, but I think the most important thing is to keep and develop the capacity for astonishement and marvel. The capacity to be sensitive to each moment, a smile, a flavor... Because I am aware of the precariousness and preciousness of life." |
| Isabelle Bonzom continues: "I
feel painting as a living body. The painter has to let it breathe,
to take care not to insist on it, nor to fix it. My main purpose is
to keep the rhythm. I develop my sensitivity to light and fluidity.
I let the painting goes and acts. I play with the accidents, the randomness.
Each work or series nourishes the other. I rejoice when a painting
opens a new path that I have never imagined. For me, painting is a
field of experiment, a great area of experiences and discoveries.
Painting is linked to life, to my surrounding, not in a selfish way.
"I" is not important. It's what we can share that interests
me. To revigorate our own art, the capacity of adaptation is essential.
"Listening" to the environment, being sensitive to the space
between things and people are also crucial. |
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| "The art of the others also nourish me, especially some "old artists-friends" who are, for me, modern and alive, as Veronese, Seurat, Titian, Chardin, Rubens, Matisse or the Pompeians. Movies, music, dance, philosophy, literature* also nourish me. During the talk, I showed external images, very important for me, as this one, which is a still from "Kaos" the Taviani Brothers's film, based on novels by Pirandello. The children are tumbling down a pumice dust hill, jumping into the Mediterranean sea. In "Kaos", the stories and the characters are inscribed within the landscape which takes an important role. The human beings are in symbiosis with their environment." |
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Artist Isabelle Bonzom, who is also a French expert of the work of American artist Eric Fischl, explored the question of the fall in his work: "During my talk "Delicious Gravity", I commented "Tumbling Woman, II" by Eric Fischl. This sculpture combines dynamism and drama. It gathered different and sometimes antinomic aspects. From above, the figure is eroticized, it reminds us that "to tumble" means not only "to fall". From a distance, we see an athletic and female body on the ground. We don't know exactly if she is falling down or if she is about to stand up. She is twisted in a spiral tensed into two opposite directions. The Tumbling Woman seems to struggle against the emptiness, against gravity, in an improbable and astonishing equilibrium. To me, Tumbling Woman is like an Amazon, an archetipal and emblematic figure, with her tonic tension, with the special gesture of her arms and her reduced right breast. The way Eric Fischl has molded the face is extraordinary. Partly erased. Disformed? A loss of identity? A mark on the mold looks like a "scar". It reinforces the sensation to be in front of an écorché, a sacrifice. Because of this "scar", the face of the Tumbling Woman is like a mask. It's not a portrait of a specific person, it could be everyone. It's as if this figure incarnates all the victims who jumped from the Twin Towers in September 11, 2001, a tragedy Eric Fischl had in mind when he made the Tumbling Woman. The strong and vivid presence of this sculpture is an hymn. Tumbling Woman embodies the absence after the total disparition of these victims." |
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Isabelle Bonzom ended her talk Delicious gravity with a sentence that Eric Fischl sent her,
"I will say," wrote Eric Fischl " that I have also talked about my creativity using the image of a spiral. I wonder if there is a term or condition in physics where an energy can be both contracting and expanding simultaneously but that is how I feel about my spiral. The revolutions become tighter and more focused as my awareness and understanding become more expansive. Your title "Delicious Gravity" is profoundly ironic which for me speaks to a perverse delight in tragedy. I don't mean perverse in any moralistic way. It is the only position one can take; pleasure in what cannot be prevented or escaped." |
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* During her talk, Isabelle Bonzom quoted Henri Bergson and Joseph Delteil. Read,
listen and see more about: Isabelle
Bonzom expresses her thanks to Claude
Baudez, CNRS iconologist and mayanist,
expert of self-sacrifice,
for their conversation about sacrifice. |
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