Léopold L. Foulem

In this exhibition – More Bibelots? – Léopold L. Foulem references his earlier exhibition, Bibelots? (March 2012), to revisit the question: “How does the meaning of a bibelot or a figurine change with shifts in context and in conceptual representation? Or do these bibelots remain simply figurines?”

To expand this inquiry here, Foulem features works that are firmly grounded in the historical precedent of decorative figurines with regard to their size, form and patterning. We thus encounter familiar figures, but in unfamiliar contexts, namely, the “rococo context” in which he “camps” them. Through the uneasy juxtaposition of normative form and edgy concept, Foulem’s sculptures thus innovatively challenge many of our mainstream social and especially, sexual expectations of behaviour.

The conceptual statements in Foulem’s eccentric work have rarely focused on the merit of narrative content. However, in these exhibited works, the story plays an integral part – the narratives these sculptural tableaus tell highlight, not only an “artistic undertaking,” but also Foulem’s political questioning of unequal power relations especially with regard to sexuality and religion (e.g., the subject of pedophilia, especially that of clergymen for Adonises as coveted sexual objects).

Foulem uses this exhibition then, as an arena through which his ceramic works can engage the specific history of the “bibelot” form and the role it has played in official artistic discourse. At the same time, Foulem positions the “bibelot” as narrative – a vehicle through which to explore the representation and degree of reception of shifting social and particularly, sexual behaviour, and their political implications, norms and deviances. He questions to what extent the “bibelot” can highlight this social inquiry.