Jean-François Boclé

Jean-François Boclé was born in 1971 Martinique. He is based in Paris.

He was trained at École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts of Bourges (1992-1995) and École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts of Paris (1995-1998).

Boclé develops a practice – installation, painting, sculpture, video, photography, intervention in public space, performance, writing – which questions the bipolarity of the postcolonial globalized world, oscillating between violence, toxicity, racialization or genrification and the possibility of We, the one glimpsed on the American continent in spite of the first step of a Cristóbal Colón on an island of the Bahamas in 1492.
This bipolarity is also considered in its work since 2009 regarding to the action that the Man on the biological non-biological world: here too, there is also an urgent need to deconstruct the walls between endogenous and exogenous.

Since his studies at the Beaux Arts, he traces the urban effacements (Déposes, Camouflabe, Découpe Déplacement, Aller Simple) and maritime (Transport, Boat, Chut des hommes tombent).
In his recent work – culinary performances, Fanon / Palo Mayombe or with the Parisian community of Voguing – he made the archeology of a South-South geography, that of a postcolonial Pharmakos.

For Boclé « the artist unceasingly says something else, he is in the there-elsewhere. There-elsewhere, because it goes beyond defined limits, because space itself is out of reach, because trance gives back, separates, brings together and drives apart ». The Parangolés of Helio Oiticica, the anthropophagic gesture, the critic poetics of David Hammons, Felix Gonzales Torres or Malevitch had very early in his life this power over him.

He exhibited among others in the ILHAM Gallery Modern and Contemporary Art Museum (Kuala Lumpur, 2016), Para Site (Hong Kong, 2016), RAW Material Company (Dakar, 2016), Bétonsalon – Centre d’art et de recherche (Paris, 2016), Saatchi Gallery (London 2015), te Tour & Taxis (Brussels, 2014), the Philharmonie de Paris:Cité de la Musique (2013), the National Museum of World Culture (Stockholm, 2013), the Queens Museum (New York, 2012), the Kunsthal KadE (Amersfoort, Netherlands, 2012), the MAC Puerto Rico (San Juan, 2011), the Grande Halle de la Villette (Paris, 2009), the MAC Panamá (2009), el BildMuseet (Umeå, Sweden, 2008), the CUC Liverpool (2008), the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne (Reims, France, 2006), the Centre d’art contemporain Le Parvis (Ibos, France, 2005), the Mapa Teatro/Laboratorio de Artistas (Bogotá, 2005), or the Ekotechnické Museum, Praga, 2004).
He participates to international Biennials such as the 4th Colombo Art Biennial, (Sri Lanka, 2016), Bienal Centroamericana (Puerto Limon and San José, Costa Rica, 2016), Dak’Art Biennial (Senegal, 2016), Subabiennale (Senegal, 2016), Bienal 43 Salón (inter)Nacional de Artistas (Medellín, Colombia, 2013), the XI Bienal de la Habana (Cuba, 2012), the First Encuentro Bienal di Caribe (Aruba, 2012), the 8 Bienal do Mercosur (Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2011), the XXXI Bienal de Pontevedra (Spain, 2010), the X Bienal de la Habana (Cuba, 2009), and the 1st Thessaloniki Biennale (Greece, 2007).

News

18.12.2021, 15H55 Sé mésié kriminel pa ka joué, performance in the frame of the carte blanche to Afrikadaa, curator : Pascale Obolo, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France

11.11.21 – 01.30.22 Inaspettatamente (Unexpectedly), group show curated by Frédéric de Goldschmidt et Grégory Lang, Cloud Seven, Brussels, Belgium