Artist: Stephen Felton
Exhibition title: Bugaboo Voodoo
Venue: Villa du Parc – Centre d’art contemporain, Annemasse, France
Date: June 15 – September 30, 2024
Photography: ©Aurelien Mole / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Villa du Parc – Centre d’art contemporain
On June 15th, La Villa du Parc is opening the last part of a season dedicated to elemental materials, magical persistence and magnetic links.
All summer long, welcome to Bugaboo Voodoo, a mischievous and facetious exhibition by New York artist Stephen Felton.
Bugaboo Voodoo brings together some 15 new works produced in the spring at the Kunsthaus Biel (CH) and murals created in situ in Annemasse by Stephen Felton (b. 1975, USA). At first glance, his painting is disconcerting in its simplicity, a joyful phlegm and immediate accessibility that desacralize the artist’s gesture. Each large-format painting features a freehand drawing, with a reduced color palette and an obvious speed of execution. The exhibition draws its iconography from occult treatises on black magic and voodoo, revealing motifs and symbols such as the serpent, the moon and the pyramid.
Stephen Felton (b. 1975, Buffalo, New York) lives and works in New York. He graduated from the acclaimed Massachusetts College of Art, before moving onto the San Francisco Art Institute.
Stephen Felton has exhibited internationally in solo and group shows. His exhibitions in Europe include “le vent, l’amour et autres déceptions”, at Mamco – Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland (2015); “Peindre la nuit”, at Centre Pompidou, Metz (2016); “Carte blanche à Richard Fauguet”, at Frac – Limousin artothèque Nouvelle Aquitaine in Limoges (2016); “City housing”, at Galerie Valentin in Paris (2019); “Teeth in the grass” at frac Champagne-Ardenne in Reims (2020); “Bugaboo Voodoo” at KBCB in Bienne, Switzerland (2024).
Bugaboo Voodoo
Bugaboo Voodoo invites us to drink a magic potion in ancient cups Bugaboo Voodoo is said like an incantation in a comics balloon
Bugaboo Voodoo articulates quick spontaneous gestures, traced out by a brush on barely prepared canvases Bugaboo Voodoo invokes in the midst of the dry season the snake dance in the rain
Bugaboo Voodoo wants to make little children laugh from fear Bugaboo Voodoo utilizes simple signs that everybody can appropriate
Bugaboo Voodoo stumbles at the gate of a haunted château unless it’s an abandoned villa
Bugaboo Voodoo combines freehand geometry and uninhibited figurative representation
Bugaboo Voodoo is offering an occult evening in the mountains by moonlight
Bugaboo Voodoo conjures up a primer on esoteric forms from pop culture
Bugaboo Voodoo runs the risk of being booed for its obvious simplicity
Bugaboo Voodoo maybe invites us not to overthink super-sophisticated discourse
Bugaboo Voodoo isn’t altogether down with it, I can’t talk about it too much right now, etc., etc…
