PARIS.- Air de Paris presents C’est un endroit que je connais assez bien [A place I know quite well], an exhibition bringing together ceramic sculptures by Juli Susin, analog prints and rayographs by Véronique Bourgoin, as well as a selection of archives from Royal Book Lodge—an editorial project initiated by the two artists that has gradually brought together many artist friends over time.
For more than thirty years, Véronique Bourgoin and Juli Susin have developed distinct practices that have continuously engaged in dialogue and intersected, nourished by formal and thematic affinities, shared political concerns, and above all by a common commitment to creation as a space for research and collaboration.
Echoing Toyen’s eponymous drawing from which the exhibition takes its title, the project reveals a constellation of gestures and forms shaped both by the legacy of Surrealism and by a critical proximity to the Situationists, in which experimentation and lived experience occupy a central place.
Opening on 11 January 2026, the exhibition will be accompanied by a text by John C. Welchman, an art historian and leading author on their practices and on the Royal Book Lodge, shedding light on its singular scope and historical importance within the field of contemporary art.
VÉRONIQUE BOURGOIN
Born in 1964 in Marseille, France
Lives and works in Montreuil, France and Albisola, Italy
Véronique Bourgoin’s practice is most often built from a series of experiments with the photographic medium, extending into other media such as ceramics, drawing, painting, the artist’s book, as well as video and installation. The experimental character of her work unfolds through the manipulation of both physical and chemical elements, highlighting spectacular effects within deliberately unspectacular contexts, where the intimate and the simulacrum intertwine. Her work examines the construction of “contemporary paradises” through a framework of recurring questions around materiality, the body, the living, identity, and modes of representation in the face of the conflicts of our time.
From an early stage, the artist developed an international network of collaborations with numerous artists. These collaborations took shape and multiplied within Atelier Reflexe (1995– 2016), an experimental photography school she founded with Juli Susin, as well as in a project initiated with Susin in the early 1990s, whose modus operandi was the creation of artist’s books. From the 2000s onward, this project evolved into an international platform for collaborations around the artist’s book, more recently known as Royal Book Lodge. In 2005, Bourgoin created The Hole Garden, a collective identity bringing together friends, and at the origin of performative actions, films, and photographic series.
Véronique Bourgoin has participated in numerous exhibitions in international institutions and festivals such as the Bibliothèque nationale de France (2023–24); Fotohof, Salzburg (2000, 2004, 2007, 2015, 2021–22); Performa, New Museum, New York (2019); Photo Festival Landskrona, Sweden (2013); Fotomuseum, Rotterdam (2013); Tütün Deposu Ek Bina, Istanbul (2011); Caochangdi Photospring Festival, China (2010); LA Art Center, Los Angeles (2009); Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo, Brazil (2009); Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City (2005); Maison d’Arts Bernard Anthonioz, Paris (2006–07); Thessaloniki Photo Biennale, Greece (2010); and the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, Curitiba Biennial, Brazil (2013).
Works and artist’s books by Véronique Bourgoin are held in several international collections, including the Getty Institute, Los Angeles; the Kandinsky Library, Paris; the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich; the New York Public Library; the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich; La Vieille Charité, Marseille; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Olomouc, Czech Republic.
JULI SUSIN
Born in 1966 in Moscow, USSR
Lives and works in Montreuil, France and Albisola, Italy
In 1981, Juli Susin left the Soviet Union with his family. In 1982, the contingencies of statelessness brought him to Berlin and then to France. His artistic practice spans a wide range of distinct disciplines, including photography, ceramics, drawing, sculpture, film, and the artist’s book. He is interested in the transformative capacities of the mediums of photography and ceramic sculpture, including the impact of chemical reactions that manifest as a specific condition of energy in latent metamorphosis.
In the mid-1980s, he developed a drawing–rubbing technique originally used in archaeology. A large part of his work is collaborative. In the 1990s, together with Véronique Bourgoin, he initiated several publishing projects and an experimental photography school, Atelier Reflexe. From the 2000s onward, he established with artist friends an international platform for collaborations around the artist’s book called Silverbridge. All of these collaborative projects have more recently been known under the name Royal Book Lodge. A retrospective book on these activities, written by John C. Welchman, was published by Hatje Cantz in 2023.
For the past 20 years, he has worked with the ceramic studio Ernan / Pacetti in Albisola (Italy). In 2010, in Paraguay, he began the Chronos-Swimmer cycle, a long-term investigation in the form of an autobiographical fiction that combines installation, film, music, photography, ceramics, and the artist’s book. Underlying themes of this investigation address ecological and human fragility, as well as the enigma of regeneration within an unstable ecosystem, raising a number of questions about the disorienting operations of time. In 2023, the Chronos-Swimmer cycle was presented at the Musée des Abattoirs, Toulouse. The book Chronos-Swimmer will be published by Hatje Cantz in May 2026.
He was appointed Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2023.
His work has been presented in institutions such as the Musée des Abattoirs, FRAC Occitanie, Toulouse (2023); Fotohof, Salzburg (2015); Fotomuseum, Rotterdam (2013); Caochangdi Photospring Festival (2010); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de México (2005); the Thessaloniki Photo Biennale, Greece; the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, Curitiba Biennial, Brazil (2013); Fundación Migliorisi (2014); Museo Nacional de Arte, La Paz (2013); and Garage Center, Moscow (2013).
Works and artist’s books by Juli Susin are held in international collections including the Getty Institute, Los Angeles; the Kandinsky Library, Paris; the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich; the New York Public Library; the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, Curitiba; the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich; CIPM; the Musée de la Vieille Charité, Marseille; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Olomouc, Czech Republic.
ROYAL BOOK LODGE
Royal Book Lodge brings together editorial and collaborative projects developed in dialogue with artists and authors such as Raisa Aid, Kai Althoff, Abel Auer, André Butzer, Véronique Bourgoin, Gregory Cadars, matali crasset, Sara Glaxia, Gudny Gudmundsdottir, Beate Gunther, Grems, Popline Fichot, Tobias Hauser, Andy Hope 1930, Daniel Johnston, Dorota Jurczak, Jean-Louis Leibovitch, Anne Lefebvre, Birgit Megerle, Jonathan Meese, Roberto Ohrt, Oskar-Von-Miller Str. 16, Anna Parkina, Raymond Pettibon, Jason Rhoades, Julia Rublow, Ralph Rumney, Gianfranco Sanguinetti, Dmitri Susin, Jeanne Susin, Lucia Sotnikova, Angel Yegros, and others.
Emerging more than 35 years ago from a collaboration between artists Juli Susin and Véronique Bourgoin, this project—under various names and labels—developed a network of artists from Paris/Montreuil, Berlin, and the former Eastern Europe, expanding internationally from the 2000s onward. At the heart of these collaborations, the creation of books enables dialogue and synthesizes experiments across different media such as painting, sculpture, photography, film, installation, ceramics, and writing.
In 2023, the research book Royal Book Lodge by art historian John C. Welchman, published by Hatje Cantz, presented the first in-depth study of more than 30 years of collaborative activity brought together under the name Royal Book Lodge. It examines the history and context of its diverse artistic practices, which intersect media such as photography, ceramics, film, painting, sculpture, and installation, with the artist’s book as a central nexus, alongside a substantial body of works and archives. Across 13 chapters and 410 illustrations, the volume explores the various cultural and political geographies of Royal Book Lodge—notably in the Paris suburb of Montreuil, Berlin, Eastern Europe, Los Angeles, Paraguay, Iceland, and Italy—as well as the narratives of emigration and travel of its protagonists, situated at the threshold between eras. It addresses issues related to the construction of fiction and autobiography; Royal Book Lodge’s relationship with certain figures of the historical avant-gardes; and notions of remote control, the archaeology of violence, and the potential of art as a “first-aid kit.”
