Exhibitions

Bruno Dufourmantelle’s work is traversed by a corporeal relation with painting and the implications he has in the formulation of an absolute plasticity; this is as true of the paintings explicitly titled « Battles » as it is for the more recent works in which the image appears out of a physical confrontation with the organic aspects of pictorial materials and techniques : « I depart from black backgrounds in order to show light » , black background, light, colours, forms...

This dynamism proves the real quality of this work, whose forms (the content, the subject) do not preexist, but emerge from the void in the surface effects : « Look for beings in painting through painting ». Juxtaposed, isolated, intermingled forms that are difficult to make out (rock-like bodies, horizon-line bodies, landscape bodies) emerge from a « material of light », worked with the impressions of brushstrokes and blades (a series entitled Paysages humains, human landscapes). More-detailed hands form landmarks, while the bodies juxtapose their solitudes and their secrets-neither united nor separated.

Bruno Dufourmantelle occupies this place in which the distinction between realism and abstraction dissolves or becomes blurred, the form and the figure meld in the exploration of pictorial practice. His paintings therefore represents a memory and it refers to the emotional turbulence that a gesture can produce. The artist makes references to what we can’t say, in its capacity to create an analogy with the invisible and the unintelligible: « Paintings are interior places. I am, above all, seeking the interiority of beings and the invisible ». He thus demonstrates, here in a musical mode, that painting is a valid substitute for the depth of emotion or expression.

Pola Carmen graduated from the Beaux-Arts in Tours and completed her academic studies at ENSAAMA (National School of Applied Arts and Crafts).

The artist works first of all at the bottom of the canvas. It covers it evenly with acrylic treated as a coating, dense and thick. The edges are left rough, we have a feeling of "wall".

On this flat surface, the artist draws "paths" pastel bold, always monochrome, long lines that run the canvas without beginning or end, from top to bottom and from left to right. A continuous gesture, always the same but never the same. A rhythmic gesture that gives life to an almost impenetrable compact frame. But as a hope, a survival, a breath, in each canvas, the artist reveals an opening in the middle of this frame.

A soft violence, a slight tension, a constructed resistance!