John Fou at Stems Gallery

Artist: John Fou

Exhibition title: But Does It Float?

Venue: Stems Gallery, Paris, France

Date: September 15 – October 15, 2022

Photography: all images courtesy of the artist and Stems Gallery, Brussels/Paris

With his coloured pencils, John Fou continues his fantastic ride, taking hands, feathers, manes, and tree leaves into the lair of all metamorphoses, where, as in Ovid’s work, the gods live in a jumble with animals. His studio is a nomadic stage, where his body enjoys breaking down all the gestures, summoning them into a living kingdom, in the making, with composite beings escaping from the depths of the earth. He used to be a dancer, and here he is, choreographing his dreams and making his free figures emerge, on the border of reality and the invisible, and of morphology and imaginary. “A dream gatherer”? That is how Gustave Moreau described himself.

From the Crocodile Man to Saint George slaying the dragon, each of his works bears the trace of a struggle within himself. What he gives us to see, he takes from the flesh of an apparition, from a world in the making, where animals, humans and vegetation indulge in all the hybridisations of a world in the making. John Fou adds to this the realm of childhood and its fabulous monsters, its mermaids and centaurs, an uneasy wonder, an orange and solar joy thwarted by horns and goats, greens and purples.

We are carried away by these chimaeras that escape all allegorical typologies. The compositions are arranged in a sort of uninterrupted movement, an Eden-Inferno in gestation. Arabesques, jetés, and lancés project into space, caresses and claws arising from the original chaos as much as from an inner world, bubbling, ready for all rebirths. The question remains open to all possibilities. Who eats who?

-Laurence Benaïm

John Fou, But Does It Float?, 2022, exhibition view, Stems Gallery, Paris

John Fou, But Does It Float?, 2022, exhibition view, Stems Gallery, Paris

John Fou, But Does It Float?, 2022, exhibition view, Stems Gallery, Paris

John Fou, But Does It Float?, 2022, exhibition view, Stems Gallery, Paris

John Fou, But Does It Float?, 2022, exhibition view, Stems Gallery, Paris

John Fou, But Does It Float?, 2022, exhibition view, Stems Gallery, Paris

John Fou, But Does It Float?, 2022, exhibition view, Stems Gallery, Paris

John Fou, But Does It Float?, 2022, exhibition view, Stems Gallery, Paris

John Fou, But Does It Float?, 2022, exhibition view, Stems Gallery, Paris

John Fou, But Does It Float?, 2022, exhibition view, Stems Gallery, Paris

John Fou, But Does It Float?, 2022, exhibition view, Stems Gallery, Paris

John Fou, But Does It Float?, 2022, exhibition view, Stems Gallery, Paris