2022 Jean Boghossian

In this solo exhibition in Italy, at Galleria Il Ponte in Florence, Jean Boghossian presents a repertoire of works which clearly sum up one of the recurrent aspects of his work in general.
[…] the exhibition in Florence allows us to get to know the artist better through some works which highlight the predominating black-and-white antinomy found throughout his works on paper or canvas.
All the works on display share the same characteristic: they are all made using Gire and smoke. The consequences of the burning on the work media give rise to singular works, thanks to the ‘sfumato’ effect produced by the soot. At times, they feature a scale of greys, at times thin burnished areas, close to the lacerations produced by the burning action of the flame.
In this city, the selection of works implicitly pay homage to Leonardo’s ‘sfumato’ technique, here obtained using smoke and not colours as the genius from Vinci did. The Florentine exhibition offers itself to our gaze while making an explicit but virtual invitation to “enter the works”. The first work that we meet in the gallery is Entrée dans la toile, 2018-2022 (230 x 280 x 400 cm), an installation with no fewer than ten canvases, set out in a sequence. They are made using fire and smoke, like the large hole that goes through them creating a sort of tunnel. Through this
environmental work, Boghossian prompts the visitor to undertake the metaphorical experience of physically entering the image and hence the artist’s work.

[…]
As mentioned, this personal exhibition by Boghossian displays a selection of works which in different ways are emblematic of his production, both in recent years (2019-2021) – a period of sensitive and for him dramatic events, from the resumption of episodes destabilizing civil life in Lebanon, one of the countries where Boghossian lives, to the Covid 19 pandemic – and in the previous years of 2011-2015, when his fiery language blossomed and took off.
By the text of Bruno Corà in the Catalog

At the same time as the exhibition in the gallery, six small-format works are exhibited at the Hotel Savoy in Florence.

In Venice, on the occasion of the 59th Art Biennale, the monumental sculpture Melencolia Contemporanea, curated by Bruno Corà, is presented to the Compagnia della Vela in the gardens of San Marco.