Frederic Fontenoy
Frédéric Fontenoy's (1963) photography focuses on the portrayal of the human body. In his opinion, photography is a profoundly artistic medium. Since the release of his photographic series entitled Métamorphosein 1988, he has been challenging the notion that it can only be used for realist depictions. His sources of inspiration include Distortions, a photographic series by Andre Kertesz, and The Anatomy of the Image, a book by Hans Bellmer. In 2006, he began working on a fictional series of intimate scenes wherein he merges the history of the artistic and political avant-garde of the 20thcentury with a subtle yet powerful eroticism. Fontenoy’s artwork is brimming with symbolism evoking the Second World War as well as references to surrealist art. Thus, his photographs transcend the timeframe of a single era, beguiling the collective unconscious. The photographer is also the only male character depicted in the ‘darkroom scenes’. The great maestro behind these stagings, a double, fiendishly imaginative and perverse, thus attempts to bring madness to its most ambitious expression – Art. The elaborate space of the photograph, polymorphous both in surface and in depth, and the photographer’s dual relationship with his subject are not inferior to the games he plays with mirrors.
An optic device, Frédéric Fontenoy’s room represents the author’s mental space. Fontenoy has participated in various group expositions and contemporary art fairs. He has also held solo exhibitions in major European cities such as Paris, Milan, Budapest, Brussels, and Ljubljana.
