Jonathan Abbou creates pictures. He mixes his artistic, sociological, philosophical and psychological knowledge. The whole thing relates to his existential concerns and his relationship to the world of the living and the dead.
Since its invention, a dialogue has been established between photography and painting. Photography as Jonathan Abbou practices it, as a craftsman and composer of images, leaves the field open to his imagination.
This series dedicated to Dante’s Commedia – canticle of Hell does not illustrate a reality, nor an objective truth, nor what is imposed by nature, but presents itself as an element of Art. The artist offers a dialogue linking representations, expression and elevation by relying on the masterful and complex work of Dante to denounce a state of the world and summon our intimacy in this world.
The representations of these transmutations belong to the artist’s obsessive universe, participating in his quest. Sometimes irreverent and fully assumed, they rely on his references and his connections with the work of Dante.
A proposal with a syncretic character is born: it summons numerous symbols from the register of spirituality, witchcraft, hell, black masses, sm… a paradigm of a great temptation for the unconscious.
Jonathan Abbou’s universe flirts with the diabolical space of the Sabbath in the continuity of the creations of Bosch, Brueghel, Huysmans, Méliès, Druillet, Witkin, Nicollet… Lucifer is never far away.
We invite you to discover the first part of this triptych whose particularity is to link to Nature, sanctifications, repressed intimacy and aesthetics of the body, before discovering Purgatory carried by the vision of Ezekiel, and Paradise.
Jonathan Abbou : La Commedia de Dante. Tome I, Hell
Until October 9, 2023
Galerie Rachel Hardouin
15 curiosity & experiences
15, rue Martel 75010 Paris – “15martelrachel” intercom
BAT.A #4 – M. +33(0) 6 60 22 50 14
www.15martel.com
