STARK - Untitled 42

In this collection of work, Jérôme’s confident depictions of the female body are both seductive and tender. Although the softness and grace of his models are so eloquently portrayed within the lines of his pen, the marks he makes are evidence of an energetic and brisk approach to drawing.

Far from objectifying the women, Jérôme takes a sensitive and sympathetic attitude. His images are respectful observations that celebrate feminine beauty whilst suggesting something of the subject’s spirit.

 ‘Through the simplicity of the drawings, and their "fragility" I have attempted to record the vulnerability of our own bodies, yet their strong presence on the paper is testament to our immense resistance to pain and diseases and the strength of our souls.’

The work intents to plunge the viewers into a set of mind rather than drawing them into a simple aesthetic contemplation. The non-beauty of the images and their abstract compositions try to describe in a graphical way, the “emotional filters” that Jérôme applies to everyday’s images. For him, what you feel is what you see, smell and taste, distorted by those emotional filters: joy, anger, fear, love, hatred, pain etc. Using repetitions and monochromes, the drawings are also a tribute to his mother and all the men and women who have suffered from (breast) cancer and continue to fight the disease.  

The outcome is a striking and usually brutal composition. In constant change and evaluation, the ambivalent aesthetism found in his drawings bounces between strange figuration and total abstraction playing with the viewers’ senses and nerves.

Ink and Watercolour on Paper

(MOUNTED UNFRAMED)