Rebecca Bournigault
Exhibition & Residency: 2015

Rebecca Bournigault is a contemporary portraitist who works mainly in video, but also uses drawing, painting and photography. Her pieces alternate between realistic depiction and the more fictive mode of the icon. Capturing moments of intensity or tension, she reveals a complexity in identity that cannot be reduced to the stereotypical discourse used in TV reality shows and talk shows. She also highlights the form of latent violence at work in the imperative of admission. Observing their reactions, our curiosity and voyeurism aroused, we see and hear these individuals revealing their intimate selves by their gestures, words and silences.

Rebecca Bournigault studied at École Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in Bourges, France. She has had numerous recent solo exhibitions at galleries and alternative spaces in Paris as well as at Galerie Biesenbach and Centre Culturel Français, Cologne; CAN, Neuchâtel, Switzerland; and Galerie Desimple, Brussels. Her work has been included in recent group shows at Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Strasbourg; Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland; and Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, and at art fairs including FIAC and Art Brussels. Her work has also been exhibited at PS1, New York; Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen; the 5th Istanbul Biennale; and the Biennale of Lyon. A recipient of the Prix Marcel Duchamp, her work is in the collections of the Fond National d’Art Contemporain, FRAC Limousin, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and Pinault Collection. She is represented by Galerie Dominique Fiat, Paris.

Bournigault’s installation at 18th Street Arts Center, Substance, presents a collection of recent works in which the artist considers the role of the body in painting from a number of directions. Through video, she examines painting and other visceral acts connected with associations of desire and abjection placed on female bodies in culture, and opposed to associations of power and virility placed on male bodies. Through paintings on paper in watercolor and oil, she explores the capacity of figuration and portraiture to express the fragmented and disassociated psychologies of contemporary lives. By turns erotic, violent, sensuous, and serene, the works describe visions of bodies mediated by technology, by society, and by social connection.

Rebecca Bournigault’s exhibition at 18th Street Arts Center and all related events are generously supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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