> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.catapult-platform.art/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Joan Bonnemaison in Focus, Painting Between Reality and Illusion - URL: https://www.catapult-platform.art/joan-bonnemaison-figures-in-thought-visual-journey-into-existence/ - Published: 2026-06-30T11:11:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-07-01T18:05:44.000Z - Description: Joan Bonnemaison paints scenes suspended between the real and the illusory, carousels and veils rendered in drowned greens. A Catapult Artist in Focus. - Author: Dominique Catherina Foertig - Tags: Myth & Folklore, Painting, Artist in Focus, Mallorca ## Joan Bonnemaison, Antwerp-Based Painter in Catapult Artist in Focus A carousel turns with no one on it. A zeppelin drifts above a washing line where two spectral figures stand among hanging sheets. Balloons, old bicycles, and long veils pulled taut across a field recur like props for an amusement that keeps not arriving. Rendered in drowned blues and mossy greens, they dissolve every figure back into its own atmosphere. ![Joan Bonnemaison, Daylight Phantasmagoria, Antwerp, 2026, installation view with four paintings, catapult contemporary](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/07/joan-bonnemaison-daylight-phantasmagoria-antwerp-2026-hero-1.webp) ****Joan Bonnemaison**, Daylight Phantasmagoria (installation view), 2026\. Courtesy the Artist and Galería Xavier Fiol. Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp - Photo Urzula Volatovska ![Joan Bonnemaison, Daylight Phantasmagoria, Antwerp, 2026, installation view with two smaller paintings](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/07/joan-bonnemaison-daylight-phantasmagoria-works-01.webp) ****Joan Bonnemaison**, **Patriarch’s Ponds*, 2026\. Courtesy the Artist and Galería Xavier Fiol. Photo Urzula Volatovska ![Joan Bonnemaison, Daylight Phantasmagoria, 2026, detail, checkered balloon-like form](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/07/joan-bonnemaison-daylight-phantasmagoria-detail-01.webp) ****Joan Bonnemaison**, **The seventh proof*, 2026\. Courtesy the Artist and Galería Xavier Fiol. Photo Urzula Volatovska Nothing here explains itself, and nothing is meant to. Each canvas holds its position at the hinge between what the eye registers and what the mind, unable to sit with ambiguity, quietly supplies instead. Bonnemaison has pointed to Clément Rosset's writing on illusion as a reference point for this, not a theory to illustrate but a permission to keep the works unresolved. --- > "The scenes work as a bridge between two contrary worlds, the real and the illusory." --- **Artist:** [Joan Bonnemaison Moyà](https://instagram.com/jbonnemaison%5F?ref=catapult-platform.art) **Born:** Palma, Mallorca, 2001 **Based in:** Antwerp, Belgium **Medium:** Oil painting, drawing **Education:** MA Painting, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp (2025–2026); Grau en Arts, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (2021–2025) **Recent Exhibitions:** *Daylight Phantasmagoria*, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp, 2026 (solo) *Dag & Nacht*, Emile Van Dorenmuseum, Genk, 2026 *Seven Plus One*, De Boer Gallery, Antwerp, 2026 *Adimensional Echoes*, XF Proyectos, Madrid, 2025 (solo) **Collections:** National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens; Colección María José Rodríguez Blanco, Pontevedra **Represented by:** [Galería Xavier Fiol](https://www.galeriaxavierfiol.com/joan-bonnemaison/?ref=catapult-platform.art) **Instagram:** [@jbonnemaison\_](https://instagram.com/jbonnemaison%5F?ref=catapult-platform.art) **Photography:** Urzula Volatovska **Image Courtesy:** Courtesy the Artist and Galería Xavier Fiol The paintings arrive at that bridge through a slow, absorptive process. Thin layers of oil soak into raw linen or canvas, each one still visible beneath the next, so that early accidents stay legible instead of being painted over. ![Joan Bonnemaison, Daylight Phantasmagoria, Antwerp, 2026, installation view with carousel and zeppelin paintings](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/07/joan-bonnemaison-daylight-phantasmagoria-antwerp-2026-installation-01.webp) ****Joan Bonnemaison**, **Daylight Phantasmagoria* (installation view), 2026\. Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp Courtesy the Artist and Galería Xavier Fiol. Photo Urzula Volatovska ![Joan Bonnemaison, Daylight Phantasmagoria, Antwerp, 2026, installation view with three figurative paintings](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/07/joan-bonnemaison-daylight-phantasmagoria-antwerp-2026-installation-02.webp) ****Joan Bonnemaison**, Daylight Phantasmagoria (installation view), 2026\. Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp Courtesy the Artist and Galería Xavier Fiol. Photo Urzula Volatovska Bonnemaison treats these accidents as material, a smear that reads as fog, a drip that becomes a fold in cloth. The compositions are worked out first through drawing, sometimes across many versions, yet the surface stays unpredictable, which is where the images actually happen. ![Joan Bonnemaison, graphite study on paper for Daylight Phantasmagoria, two figures with hanging cloth, catapult exhibition submission](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/07/joan-bonnemaison-daylight-phantasmagoria-study-02.webp) ****Joan Bonnemaison**, study for Daylight Phantasmagoria, 2026\. Graphite on paper. Courtesy the Artist and Galería Xavier Fiol Photo Urzula Volatovska In Hold the *Dense Daylight Fog*, a figure drags an immense pale veil across a field of near-black green, the cloth folding into ridges that could be fabric, water, or simply the residue of a brush finding its way. Patriarch's Ponds, its title borrowed from the opening pages of Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, holds no obvious scene from the novel at all, only the same charged stillness that precedes something inexplicable. ![Joan Bonnemaison, Hold the Dense Daylight Fog, oil on linen, figure pulling a veil across a field, 2026](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/07/joan-bonnemaison-hold-the-dense-daylight-fog.webp) ****Joan Bonnemaison,** Hold the Dense Daylight Fog, 2026\. Oil on linen, 240 x 110 cm. Courtesy the Artist and Galería Xavier Fiol. ![Joan Bonnemaison, Could We Choose to Exist?, oil on canvas, carousel motif, 2026](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/07/joan-bonnemaison-daylight-phantasmagoria-could-we-choose-to-exist-1.webp) ****Joan Bonnemaison**, Could We Choose to Exist?, 2026\. Oil on canvas, 150 x 120 cm. Courtesy the Artist and Galería Xavier Fiol The same undertow surfaces in The Seventh Proof and Berlioz, both named after details from Bulgakov's book, while Could We Choose to Exist? I and III return to the carousel as recurring architecture, the motif that, in the artist's words, opened the door to zeppelins, veils, and the rest of this private cast. Bonnemaison was born in Palma in 2001 and studied at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya before moving to Belgium for an MA in Painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp, currently underway. Literature runs alongside the studio work as directly as the painting itself, from Bulgakov to Borges' The Aleph and Jorge Amado's Captains of the Sand. ![Joan Bonnemaison, See You in Samarkand, detail, oil on linen, figure beneath a zeppelin, 2026](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/07/joan-bonnemaison-see-you-in-samarkand-detail.webp) ****Joan Bonnemaison,** See You in Samarkand, 2026 (detail). Oil on linen. Courtesy the Artist and Galería Xavier Fiol. Photo Urzula Volatovska ![Joan Bonnemaison, Hold the Dense Daylight Fog, detail, oil on linen, folded veil across green ground, 2026](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1c/24/1c2478ff-417d-4e88-8226-288af467f6b9/content/images/2026/07/joan-bonnemaison-hold-the-dense-daylight-fog-detail.webp) ****Joan Bonnemaison,** Hold the Dense Daylight Fog, 2026 (detail). Oil on linen. Courtesy the Artist and Galería Xavier Fiol. Photo Urzula Volatovska The project also extends into a self-published photobook of 35mm images shot across Belgium, a gesture borrowed from Spanish painter Luis Claramunt's own resistance to the studio as a production line. The paintings don't ask to be solved. They ask to be entered, and left exactly as uncertain as they were found. --- [**Instagram Joan Bonnemaison**](https://www.instagram.com/jbonnemaison%5F/?hl=de&ref=catapult-platform.art) [**Galería Xavier Fiol on Instagram**](https://www.instagram.com/galeriaxavierfiol/?ref=catapult-platform.art) **About Catapult Contemporary - Art Platform Submission** This is a exhibition review published by Catapult — an independent editorial platform for contemporary art, based in Vienna. We publish exhibition reviews, artist features, interviews, and critical context, with a focus on emerging and mid-career practices from Europe and beyond. [catapult.art](https://www.catapult-platform.art/) Want to be featured? 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