Jérôme Zonder: Blow Up

Given carte blanche at MBAL, Jérôme Zonder (France, 1974) transforms through drawing two floors of the museum into an immersive environment, taking over both walls and floors and inviting the visitor to wander among the works themselves. The French artist, who is primarily a draughtsman, exploring all facets of the discipline, is one of the most promising artists of his generation. The work he has created for nearly twenty years stands out through the virtuosity, the visual power and intensity of his narrative and philosophical approach. Jérôme Zonder uses charcoal, graphite and fingerprint techniques to create a “polygraphic” exhibition at MBAL. 

The concept of Blow up pays tribute to Michelangelo Antonioni’s film made in 1966, whose different meanings summarize the experiments of the visual artist, who seeks to push the boundaries, playing with scale and focal length, as well as fragmenting everything. For Zonder, drawing is like digging into the image. His sources of inspiration are varied, and his work often pays tribute to the great masters, showing his compulsive relationship with the images of our time. Whether inspired by current or archive imagery, the history of art, comics or cinema, his work translates on paper his rather dark vision of the world, its social, political or cultural changes, as well as the dramas of the past. Always trying to explore new ways of drawing and see how far it can go, Jérôme Zonder questions the human condition, as well as memory and the footsteps we leave behind. 

A graduate of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Jérôme Zonder is represented by Galerie Nathalie Obadia (Paris/Brussels). His work has been shown in successful personal exhibitions in leading cultural institutions, notably Fatum at La maison rouge – Antoine de Galbert foundation in 2015; The Dancing Room at the Tinguely Museum in Basel in 2017 or Devenir Traces at Domaine de Chambord in 2018. His work is receiving increasing attention on the international art scene and is now included in major collections in France and abroad. 

Also on view:
Zoé Aubry, Noms Inconnus (until January 26, 2020)
Alexandre Joly, Absolute Sine (until January 26, 2020)
Sylvie Fleury, 8 (until January 26, 2020)
A Normal Working Day, Day 3611, 2019 (until January 26, 2020)
Alix Marie, Sucking on the Night (until January 26, 2020)