Juicy Fruits is the first solo exhibition of Eric Giraudet in a Dutch gallery, following up a duo exhibition with Ceel Mogami de Haas in 2023 at Galerie Martin van Zomeren. The same year, his works were exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum, a Tale of A Tub and galerie Air de Paris. He has benefited from personal exhibitions at La Villa du Parc, Annemasse (2024), the Fries Museum, Leeuwarden (2017), Punt WG, Amsterdam (2019), at Centre d’art les Capucins, Embrun (2019) and gallery Lily Robert, Paris (2019). He has made several performances at the Centre Pompidou, at Foundation Ricard, la Criée Art Centre and Le Cyclop in the forest of Fontainebleau near Paris.

"Although apples remain good for only two weeks after picking, the fresh apples we buy at Albert Heijn are probably months old. Sometimes even a year old, thanks to advanced preservation techniques. In the past, the fruit in Dutch supermarkets was often dry and tasteless. Nowadays, delicious juicy oranges and yellow kiwis are on sale throughout the year. The food industry creates an almost dystopian reality, in which seasonlessness, genetic manipulation and marketing-moulded food trends are the norm. Other major players in this industry are fertiliser producers and animal food giants: the companies that fund Dutch farmers' protests and exercise influence on national politics.
Eric Giraudet is fascinated by this sphere of tension between ecology, politics, history and agriculture. And also by storytelling and visual culture. His references range from medieval iconography to contemporary advertising campaigns, from science fiction to folkloric practices, and from his agricultural family history to his current experiences as a father. The stories and images often revolve around the body and dynamics of movement. Growth and decay. Spatial collages of images and organic forms that flow and gush, and sometimes collapse.
For example, the series of glass sculptures Stream of Infertility depicts floating sperm cells. Giraudet imagines these cells as infertile, due to exposure to agricultural toxins. This story, which may sound like science fiction, is in fact a scientifically proven reality. Pesticides, toxic chemicals and air pollution affect sperm quality, which can lead to reduced male fertility. Stream of Infertility continues a line of research in Giraudet's oeuvre focusing on the impact of the agricultural industry on human life.
Giraudet de Boudemange (as his full name reads) is among the first generation in his family not working in agriculture. ‘I've grown kids, not crops’ he jokes. He grew up amid his father's family farm of corn mass cultivation in the Allier region, while relatives on his mother's side breed cows that can live on minimal amounts of grass in the Argentinian flatlands. In his recent work, the artist interweaves ecological concerns with his experience as a father. For instance, the series Birth(s) juxtaposes photographs of his children playing in the bath with pieces of fruit, alongside manipulated images of agrarian culture, food and fertility.

The fruit pieces return in Corso 1, Corso 2 and Corso 3, this time made of glass. The three sculptures look like slightly oversized toy trucks, with glass fruit shapes draped over them. They evoke the image of carefully staged fruit and vegetable still lifes on trucks. The title Corso refers to the Gelderland tradition of parades of lavishly decorated wagons. Using seeds, vegetables and fruit, villagers build giant caricature-like figures, similar to carnival wagons traditionally used to mock systems of power. Giraudet's glass sculptures look playful and lively, but it is also as if the fragility of life resonates in them.
Nutri-Scores, the series of wall sculptures, each bearing the name of deity associated with fertility, was created by Giraudet by draping melting glass over bath seats. These seats, meant to encapsulate the baby's body and keep it safely above water, subtly refer to the ritual of baptism and evoke associations with archetypal forms such as the Venus of Willendorf. The glass incorporates iconographic elements of the deities the sculptures refer to. For example, apples can be seen in the glass of Iðunn, named after the goddess of youthfulness in Norse mythology, who distributed apples to other gods to remain young until the end of the world. Meandering snakes and grain stems are clearly visible in Renenoutet, named after the Egyptian serpent goddess of breast feeding and protector of crops. And if you look closely, you will discover a row of breasts in Artemis; a reference to Artemis of Ephesus, who symbolised fertility and abundance with her many breasts. Besides this traditional iconography, all glass panels also contain nutri-scores; our contemporary symbols of nourishment.
With Giraudet's intricate material experiments, Juicy Fruits takes visitors into historical and contemporary narratives that encourage reflection on what we cultivate, consume, decompose and allow to live."

Text by Titus Nouwens