Jérôme Zonder: Sans Issue (étude pour un portrait de Pierre-François)

This new body of work brings together the latest portraits of Pierre-François, a ubiquitous figure in the artist’s graphic universe for over ten years. The recent drawings are part of the continuity of his research around a figure borrowed from Marcel Carné’s film “Les Enfants du Paradis” (1945). Jérôme Zonder constructs his characters by assembling drawings that are extremely diverse in terms of both subject and stylistic device. The jumble of images at the centre of a single portrait triggers creative collisions – made up of disharmonies and visual echoes – and invites the viewer to penetrate into the heart of a figure that represents the human condition in the Anthropocene era.

To create his portraits, the artist strives to find the right line, the one that, true to the subject, can embody him beyond simple figurativeness. To do this, he employs a prolific graphic repertoire: realism, abstract compositions, fingerprints and codes borrowed from comic strips merge into the heart of the drawn surface. Added to this effervescence of styles is a visual vocabulary unique to the artist. Eclectic – at times almost dystopian – themes intertwine and allow the figure’s personal history to merge with the great Common History: film extracts, historical archives and iconic paintings penetrate his subjects and inhabit his drawings.