Spontaneity and innocence
“Contemporary primitives” are artists who today build their own language.
Their expression is spontaneous, instinctive, out of time, fashions and any scholarly reference, as close as possible to their inner need. By inventing their words, their grammar, a revival towards a “childhood” or a “first” state of the art, immediately readable by all.
Isabelle Bonafoux tells stories. The anecdote becomes, with it, legendary, mythical, timeless story.
It offers a return to the original freshness, innocence and purity of the world. Pierre SOUCHAUD – Artension
Studies at the Beaux-Arts de Lyon, exhibition since 1981.
The works of Isabelle BONAFOUX have been presented by the gallery since 2006.
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Isabelle Bonafoux:
I have always drawn and sculpted! And always with lots of details, characters and colors! I started with little characters, like children do (…).
It was at the Beaux-Arts that I discovered sculpture. My immediate interest was not due to chance, given the influence that my father, who was an engineer-architect, had on me. I started to combine sculpture, my colors and my details. In short, my vocation to create a story of childhood and family.
I owe it to my sculpture teacher to have discovered siporex, which is cellular concrete. When we have the choice, on realizing it is not enough to have ideas, we must find the materials that match. I didn’t like the earth at all because it required too much detail, that I had to make plaster molds … With the earth, I had to “add”, or I liked to “take away”. I liked to meet resistance from the material part. This is what siporex does. It gives me a kind of awkwardness that I like. And then, I can put my colors on it. In fact, the corn was, “of the volume, but colored”. My sculptures are painted in the colors of my childhood. And, over time, I finally understood that what we lose in youth, in vitality, compensates by creation; it’s always the victory of the spirit (…).
Singular Art? Following my meeting with DREUX and Louis CHABAUD, I was invited one day to the Festival of PRAZ-SUR-ARLY, a festival of extreme quality. And there I received, the shock of my life, love at first sight. The discovery of colors, imaginations, people who did not “take the lead”, simplicity, happiness. And I finally saw the Bulletin of Ozenda, with my head, my works, … I finally understood the scope of this review. 1999 was the realization of all possible paths on the way I wondered. Since then, it has been great happiness. I found my family. Its very important. I sometimes exhibit with other artists, but the real happiness is to be with Singulars.
Am I singular or not? In fact, this is not the problem. But I am good with these people, with their works. I find it rewarding to be with “his family” (…)
I hope to continue to be “inhabited”, and to be able to offer me the freedom to exhibit only where I want. Say no when I don’t want to go somewhere. And that time does not pass too quickly for me to have the time to say all that I want to say.
