JULIEN BONET - Glory

Technique: Promptography on Hahnemühle Fine Art paper
Size: 50 x 40 cm
Edition: 3 + 1 AP
Year: 2024-25

Signed, dated and edition numbered by the artist on a separate label.

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In Glory, a figure appears that oscillates between armor and body, between concealment and invitation. The glossy surface—pale, smooth, almost like porcelain—seems both vulnerable and forbidding. Four openings pierce the shell: holes reminiscent of eyes, mouths, or wounds; transitions between inside and outside. They deny a clear function and yet carry a quiet eroticism within them—an intimacy that is not demonstrative, but arises from the mere tension between revelation and concealment.

The feminine is presented here not in an idealized way, but ambivalently and embodied. The purple heels, the bare legs—exposed, almost awkward—anchor the figure in a vulnerable present. The shell, however, remains impenetrable, a cocoon that simultaneously protects and isolates. It suggests fertility and silence, incubation and withdrawal—a body in transition that doesn't yet know what it will transform into.

Although situated within Bonet's larger series Masquerades , which references European winter festivals, Glory stands as a singular meditation on contemporary femininity: on how desire, fear, and identity converge in a world where the body is both overexposed and veiled.