JULIEN BONET - Fetishist

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.

fetishist

A body that is more a covering than a form. Black material, tightly stretched, engulfs every contour, forming an oversized, almost organic bulge that stands in the space like an alien organ. Only the bare legs betray that a human being lies within – vulnerable, exposed, and yet completely hidden.

Fetishist is an image of longing and projection. The fetish replaces that which is intangible; it transforms lack into ritual, desire into object. Bonet presents it not as a provocation, but as a mirror: what we desire speaks less about the object than about ourselves. Within the soft, lustrous covering resonates eroticism as well as loneliness—the silent hope of finding a new self through concealment.

In the context of the series "Masks, " the fetish becomes a myth of the private: While earlier masks were intended to banish collective fears, this one speaks of intimacy, of secrets behind closed doors. The pink walls and the banal interior contrast with the darkness of the disguise and reveal a paradoxical tension: the home as a stage for the hidden.

Fetishist questions the boundaries between desire and control, intimacy and isolation. It's a contemporary ritual that shows us how deeply our identities are shaped by what we hide.

Part of the ongoing series Masquerades – contemporary myths between fear, ritual and collective memory.