This Tuesday, the Lou Babazouk gallery opens in Nice. An exhibition dedicated to French photographer Lionel Bouffier, a self-taught artist who chose photography as his medium to express his creativity. A photographic retrospective of a cultural and artistic event mixing the human and the inhuman through imagination.
Situated in the heart of Vieux-Nice, the Lou Babazouk gallery seems small at first glance but is large for what it contains.
Once inside, visitors can admire the paintings displayed on the walls. Dark landscapes, nocturnes, nude figures… The photos are likely to make admirers think, raise awareness, and provoke certain emotions.
At the beginning of the visit, the first painting has a dual meaning. Its name is “The Awakening”. It depicts an almost naked woman in a cardboard box in the middle of a bridge at night, as if she were waking up, but in a dream. Visitors might believe that the gallery takes them into a parallel world through the various photographs.
Emotions, sensations, like this painting depicting a little girl on a bicycle (symbolizing the human and innocence) facing a large pile of trash and waste (the inhuman world created by man) and the large claw of a crane just above, which might suggest a demonic hand.
Imaginative, dark and deserted landscapes… In these works, the human confronted with the reality of the urban world. The goal is to show that all these boycotted, abandoned, polluted, even destroyed places, where man never ventures, he is nonetheless responsible for the existence of these places.
In the opposite aisle, the photographs are enough to arouse curiosity and imagination. Especially when looking at the angel (on the right) about to dive from the empty pool (whose cross of Christ is represented by the black tiles) or the pregnant naked woman (on the left) about to give birth in a dark place where life is absent.
