Poprzeczna Gallery, Miechow 3 Poprzeczna St. invites you to an exhibition unforgettable by French visual artist Gael Bonnefon, which will be on display from February 8 to April 30, 2025, the opening with the participation of the author will begin on February 8, 2025 at 7 pm.
Gael Bonnefon: It was in the gaps of everyday life, between the visible and the invisible, that both the way I photograph, the visual language and the message itself were born 19 years ago. Since then, guided by a vision rooted in tragedy, I have not stopped reformulating, developing and redefining it. When I am in the creative process, life - with its shadows and brightness - ceases to exist, and photography becomes a testimony to the inexpressible. The world is like a stage, and the reality involving my loved ones becomes the action I narrate as I move from faces to silhouettes, from the people they are to the figures they become, immersed in the light of deep dusk and unmoving in the face of dazzling dawn. Humans gradually give way to quiet, ephemeral landscapes, ready to embrace what we have lost, what everyone carries within themselves. The shadows cease to be an abyss over which we lean, becoming a guide towards what's next. We move forward seeking intensity and wonder.
Rafael Garido: Figures, spaces, matter: these are the basic motifs to which Gael Bonnefon's photography continually returns, which it re-evokes, shifts, connects and separates. Extracted from everyday life, yet hidden by it, the images play out the drama of reality - sometimes subtle, sometimes macabre. Reality, the content of which is more than uncertain along with its matter - if this matter exists at all - are mixed with the substance of the dream, spectral and changeable. From here comes the work on unpredictability and the raw structure of the negative (graininess, chemical colors, scratches), as well as the highly original use of color, which in some photographs seems to flow down the motifs, taking the image with it, up to the border where abstraction dominates. Under their ecstatic or overwhelming influence, matter, spaces, figures disintegrate and reconnect, taking the form of a waterfall, a rock wall, a hug, a gas explosion or a blue man with a red umbrella.
Gael Bonnefon graduated from the School of Fine Arts in Toulouse (Isdat) in 2008, with highest honors. He has exhibited his work at Villa Pérochon, at the Été Photographique in Lectoure, in Paris at the 2012 Jeune Création at the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d'Arles and at PhotoEspaña, at the Abattoirs Museum in Toulouse in 2014 and 2024, at the Château d'Eau Gallery in 2012 and 2019, and at Vitrine Frac Île-de-France in 2020. His works are in the collections of Frac Midi-Pyrénées, Gallery Château d'Eau, Kulturamt in Düsseldore and the Kiyosato Museum in Japan. He has participated in Temps Zero projects in Berlin, Prague, Rome, Bucharest, Groningen and Thessaloniki. He has also received residency fellowships in Germany, France and Israel. His book: Elegy for the Mundane was published by Lamaindonne Publishing House in 2019, another, Même soleil in 2021 by Iikki Books, a Aux jours inoubliables by Sun/Sun Editions in 2022. A new book will be published by Editions de Juillet in 2025. Gael Bonnefon's artistic practice focuses mainly on photography and video, taking the form of installations (video projections, photographs presented with sound ) or publications (monographs).
Transverse is an Art Hub for art photography. On the one hand, an art gallery - whose mission is to popularize artistic photography. We have already hosted within our walls, among others, Kacper Kowalski (several-time winner of World Press Photo), Patryk Bulhak Abandoned daughters tigera, Rafal Siderski and poet Małgorzata Lebda with the project Tributaries vibrating, afterimages and songs on the banks, a group exhibition of Leica Street Photo, Non-pejazzi Karol Baginski, or Iwona El Tanbouli - Jablonski and Maciej Jablonski with an exhibition of Zadra.
On the other hand, Poprzeczna is also a studio - a place where we produce photographic exhibitions. Although we have been on the market for a short time, we have already cooperated with renowned artists and large festivals, such as the Month of Photography in Krakow and the Festival of Photography in the Framework of Sopot.
You are welcome!
Transverse Gallery