Melancholia of the crepuscule
"Declining light, saturated color, chiaroscuro... This young photographer delivers an envisionned version of everyday life.
What lulls the eye in Gaël Bonnefon's work is the persistence of failing light, contrasted darkness and flash photography along with his milky skies and excessively saturated colors.
Only two years after having completed the Fine Arts school of Toulouse, this young artist has already exhibited a number of series, drawn from this express position, portraying downfall (About Decline) as well as sleep and dream (Traum) or abandonment and destruction (L'entraînement). His storytelling arises from the combination of this technique and the subtle staging of his light-stricken subjects : disheveled nudes, distraught characters, drunken faces, urban compositions blurred by pre-apocalyptic snowflakes... A vision of everyday life which doesn't rule out as such a certain naturalistic aesthetic, as in the elegiac image of a woman in a tapered dress walking in the snow.
The crepuscular world which unfolds in Gaël Bonnefon's work appears at first as if immersed in a large artificial halo. But he rapidly swings into a universe of mental landscapes and intimate journalisme. The uneasiness he casts thus becomes most efficient. This deftness seemingly creates the impression that the twilight we are faced with is not that of conventional imagery.
The world according to Gaël Bonnefon is a doubtfull reality, a spellbound state of half-light never succeded by night or day and from which the whisper of an acute strangeness arises".
Sébastien Porte (Télérama n°3163) (jpg)
Translated from the French by Matilda Holloway
Elegy for the Mundane
Michaël Soyez (exhibition text - Château d'Eau gallery 2019)
Melancholia of the crepuscule
Sébastien Porte (Télérama n°3163)
"Elegy for the Mundane" les aspérités d'un même monde
Julien Hory (Fisheye magazine)
Entre les gens
Paul de Sorbier (exhibition text, Maison Salvan)
Douceurs de la vie violente
Fabien Ribery (L'intervalle)
Elegy for the mundane
Mickaël Soyez (catalogue, Château d'eau)
Une poétique de l'accident
L'intervalle (Entretien par Fabien Ribery)
About decline
(Exhibition text / Château d'eau gallery)
Temps Zéro
Mina Lenvka (website)
Elle est où la baballe?
Olivier Michelon (catalogue, Afiac 2013)
Les herbes fauves
Arnaud Fourrier (catalogue, Afiac 2013)
About decline - fragments -
François Saint-Pierre (Notice, Abattoirs Museum collection)
59 km
Michel Métayer (Cheminements 2011)
About decline
Marine Eric (Jeune création exhibition, Le Centquatre)