2022. 4. 22 – 5. 20
Geoffrey Bouillot

Geoffrey Bouillot, born in Chalon-sur-Saône, Burgundy, France, resides and works in Tokyo, Japan. Bouillot was influenced by pop art, cubism, and Italian futurism, and has recently explored more personal and intimate topics in depicting portraits, still lifes, landscapes, and interiors. Light, equilibrium, and solid contrasts are his core research theme. The artist maintains a monochrome palette for optimum visual expression in creating his unique style. He strives to convey the power of minimalism and the diversity of the universe through the process of bringing out the light in his works.

Bouillot’s debut solo exhibition in Korea is entitled Pomme, meaning apple in French. The exhibition features women placed in the center of the Garden of Eden, the birthplace of humanity and life. The consciousness of the exhibition theme derived from his observation as a father, who had his first daughter last year, on the growth of his child, her future as a woman, and the role and identity of a woman next to a man.

The fruit apple manifested in various cultures and histories with religious and mythical meanings. Aphrodite in Greek mythology considered the apple sacred and throwing an apple to someone meant declaring love towards them. In the era of the Roman Empire, it symbolized immortality, wisdom, and supreme power, with the golden apple representing the earth or the sun. In Western cultures, especially in France, apples involve a more complex and profound meaning. The forbidden fruit that the first woman of humanity in the Bible bit led God to be infuriated with this act, expelling humanity to the mundane ground, driving them out of paradise to protect humans from knowledge. It is also a symbolic meaning of sexual temptation, which has been used to imply human sexuality in an ironic context. The cause of this usage lies in the exterior of the apple. A curved body and soft, fragrant flesh of a woman resembling the apple would make her knowledgeable in desire and love. The reason for contradicting symbols and the co-existence of the contrast in meaning derives from the weight of the original sin and its metaphor for modern women. Beautiful and powerful, like the meaning of the apple, modern women have the knowledge and wisdom to embody the future of humankind, and men intimidated by the power try to control women.

The exhibition Pomme will present 18 new works reflecting the coexistence of the two cultures, French and Japanese, which shaped Bouillot’s aesthetics and personality.

ELIGERE
55, Apgujeong-ro 79-gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul , Korea
+82 2 518 4287

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