Jean-Luc Moulène

Perhaps best known for his racy Amsterdam Girls series, the oeuvre of photographer and sculptor Jean-LucMoulène is better typified by the question of how we encounter consumer goods. He notes that mass-produced commodities are typically first realized and designed in two dimensions, and therefore are best seen or understood in media that reproduces that state. Works such as his 2008 Régulier, Barneville or his 2003 Objects of Protest series variously depict cigarette packages, frying pans, light bulbs, or spools of thread. Although they at first appear benign or celebratory, Moulène’s probing lens and tightly constructed contextual framework gives a political bent to the works, questioning how objects come to embody various aspects of culture and desire. 

Moulène has shown his art widely since the late 1980s, with exhibitions in Lebanon, Belgium, France, Taiwan, Britain, Colombia, and the United States. He was included in the 2002 Sao Paolo Biennial and the 2003 Venice Biennale. In 2009, Moulène was the subject of a travelling, European retrospective and, in 2010, another at Dia:Beacon and the Dan Flavin Art Institute.