Exhibitions

2020

Photoschweiz, Zurich
Caravanserail, Galerie Du Passage, Paris
In Bloom POP-UP And Live Performance With Julia Seeman, Berlin
POV9, Artemis Fontana, Paris

2019

Brace!Brace! With Andreas Lumineau, Open Studio, Paris
SITUATIONS/Porn, MECHANICAL PAINTINGS, Fotomuseum, Winterthur
When The Air Becomes Electric, CPG, Genève
Festival De Mode Et De Photographie, Hyères
Fun&Fury, Performance Night, Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich
How To Ecstasy, SPACE PLACE, Nijni Taguil, Russia

2018

In Bloom, Webber Represent, London
Wilt!, La Becque, Artist Residency, La Tour-De-Peilz
Swiss Design Awards, Messe, Basel
Loading… Works From The Foam Collection, FOAM, Amsterdam
Fever Dreams, Webber Represent, London

2017

Dimitri, Or The Silent Orgasm, Curated By FOAM, XBANK, Amsterdam
Fluxing, Rencontres De La Photographie, Arles
Swiss Design Awards, Basel
Deaddarlings #9 Entropy, FOAM, Amsterdam
Fuori Catalogo, Fondazione Vico Magistretti, Milan
Trash Can For Heart-People Have No Soul, Fotofestiwal, Lodz
Fotograf Des Jahres, Photo17, Zurich

2016

Hybridation, Rencontres De La Photographie, Arles
Making Memeries, Offprint London, Tate Modern, London
Maldoror Extended, FOAM Talent, Beaconsfield Gallery, London
Photobooth, Journées Photographique, Bienne
Skeuomorphic, Festival Circulations, Le 104, Paris
Maldoror Extended, FOAM Talent, De Markten, Brussels
INTIMITÉ / IDENTITÉ / RÉALITÉS CONTEMPORAINES, More Than A Gallery, Paris
DER GREIF A Process 2.0, Photomonth Festival, Krakow

2015

Selecta, Nyon
De Fotokopie, OFFPRINT, Paris
Maldoror Extended, Foam Talents, Atelier Néerlandais, Paris
Festival Planche(S) Contact, Deauville
Maldoror Extended, Foam Talents, UNSEEN Festival, Amsterdam
Autumn Contemporary Collection, Shine Artist Gallery, London
Maldoror, Solo Show, Foam 3h, Amsterdam
Maldoror Extended, Foam Talents, Mercatorplein Parc, Amsterdam
Swiss Design Awards, Basel
Plat(T)Form, Fotomuseum, Winthertur
Quottom Exhibition Opening : Realität Und Verzweiflung, Sunday Inventory, Zurich
Photobooth, Spacio D’el Orso, Milano
LOW_RES, Kunstraum Toni Areal, Zurich

2014

L’art Se Livre, Curated By Nathalie Herschdorfer, Musée Des Beaux-Arts, Le Locle
8 Jeunes Photographes, Galerie 4Quatre, Paris
Rencontres Photographiques d’Arles, La Galerie Du Club, Arles
ECAL Photography, Gallery Carla Sozzani, Milano
ECAL Photography, Gallery Corso Como, Shanghaï
La Nouvelle Photographie Suisse, Salon Du Livre, Geneva

2013

ECAL Photography, Elac, Lausanne
ECAL Photography, Galerie Azzedine Alaïa, Paris
Sharks Eat Monkeys, Galerie Urgent Paradise, Lausanne

Selected Publications

2020

TRAX
APART Magazine
POV Paper
Alei Journal
L’Exhibitioniste, Rizzoli
Musee Magazine
It’s Nice That
Glamcult

2019

Lens Culture
Novembre Magazine
Pen Magazine
WIRED
BOOOOOOOOOM!
Tank Magazine

2018

In Bloom, Published By SPBH
British Journal Of Photography
FOAM Magazine
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
APART Publication
VOSTOK Corea
Collaborate! Curated By FOAM Magasin
IMA Japan
S/ Magazine

2017

L’Officiel
Interview Germany
Kingkong Digital
BON Magazine
Bolero Magazine

2016

IMA Japan
Toile Magazine
Flofferz Magazine
OFF THE WALL
British Journal Of Photography
Forget Them Magazine
Sepp Magazine
NZZ Toolbox
Young Swiss Magazine
Zukunft
I-D Online

2015

WAD Magazine
Passages Magazine, Pro Helvetia
Choli Cholie, Walter Pfeiffer, RVB BOOKS / ECAL
Blow Magazine
YET Archive 01-09
FOAM Magazine , Talent Issue
Libération
OFF The WALL
POV, Quaterly Mindfuck
Citizen K
YET Magazine
Desire New Erotic Photography, Edited By Patrick Remy, Prestel
Quottom Magazine
Pirlo
Glam Kult

2014

Maldoror, Collections Of 6 Booklets, Self-Published
Ecal Photography, Hatje Cantz
Étapes, Design Et Culture Visuelle
Das Auge Un Der Stein, La Foncière
Der Greif Magazine

Excerpt from essay
by Katy Barron, curator and art advisor specialising in photography

Jean-Vincent Simonet is best described as an alchemist, creating pictures that sit uneasily in the borderlands between photography, sculpture, and painting. His unique approach is a result of his family heritage and his fascination with the process behind image making. After the establishment of a successful career as a photographer, he returned to his family’s industrial printing factory, realising the huge potential for experimentation that was offered by industrial printing machines.  

Simonet began to understand that through using heat, humidity and different drying methods, he could transform, erase, vanish, almost sculpt the surface of a print. The resulting works of art, seen in this exhibition, are printed on a plastic foil-type surface that has been put through a variety of processes whilst the ink is not yet fixed. No two pieces can ever be identical even if they are made from the same original file and the physicality involved and gestural expression that Simonet brings to each print is finally fixed when it is run through water for the last time.  

This exhibition includes selects from two recent series – Flowers, Novembre, an on-going body of work that began in 2018, and Sapporo Lights, made in 2022 and seen here for the first time. Both bodies of work centre around images of flowers. For Novembre he builds floral still lives in the studio, using lighting systems that emphasises the artifice of the object, its gradients and hues, placed in deliberately uncanny compositions.  

In contrast to the staged floral abstractions of Novembre, all taken on a medium-format camera, Sapporo Lights was shot with an iPhone whilst Simonet was travelling in Japan at the end of 2022. These are pictures of large neon flowers, civic decorations erected in the streets of Sapporo and Hokkaido at Christmastime. The parallels and contrasts between the artifice of Simonet’s studio still-lives and the man-made decorations leads to questions around artificiality, mimesis and intention.