Michel Frère
16 Jan - 07 Mar 2015
MICHEL FRÈRE
Peintures d'Italie
16 January - 7 March 2015
Albert Baronian is pleased to announce the 7th exhibition of Michel Frère in his gallery. The paintings shown in this exhibition, organised in collaboration with Gentili Prato gallery, are the result of several trips Frère made to Montecatini in the 1990s.
“ All I know is why I choose to do the type of landscape paintings I do: the image is very low referential, but at the same time, it is not abstract, or at least, it is not "abstract" in the sense we usually understand. Maybe this is due to the fact that I do not longer understand what is meant by abstraction. I know that a white wall is abstract, an idea can be abstract, mathematics, but painting? If I remember correctly, Russian artists were doing abstract stuff a long time ago. I even think they stopped doing it after a while. " Michel Frère
This painter, draftsman, sculptor and photographer was trained at La Cambre in Brussels. In the 1980s he promptly experienced success, before disappearing prematurely in 1999 at the age of 38. He was active in Brussels and New York.
Characterized by sedimentation, superpositions of layers of paint, the work of Michel Frère aims at the alliance of opacity and light. His oeuvre transforms reality by sweeping figurative elements through matter. It is an impression of monochrome massiveness that emanates from his paintings and sculptures, kneaded and always Matterist. His paintings fit neither into a trend nor into a certain fashion. It transcends time while being anchored in, questioning the history of painting at the same time.
Giving the impression to the viewer to be caught up in a bottomless pit for a journey to the centre of pictorial matter and to matter in general, his work pushes the worldly limits and creates a sense of vertigo. His huge paintings are to be read as abstract paintings, including brown, black and dull green with brightly lit chips quietly bubbling to the surface. Thick textures that are infinitely moving, without beginning or end, from which the world seems to arise to die. Michel Frère refused to conform to fashionable tendencies, drawing exclusively on the source of intuition by which he intended to capture the world.
Albert Baronian organized the first solo exhibition of Michel Frère in December 1985, at his gallery in Knokke. This was followed by a large number of solo and group exhibitions.
Peintures d'Italie
16 January - 7 March 2015
Albert Baronian is pleased to announce the 7th exhibition of Michel Frère in his gallery. The paintings shown in this exhibition, organised in collaboration with Gentili Prato gallery, are the result of several trips Frère made to Montecatini in the 1990s.
“ All I know is why I choose to do the type of landscape paintings I do: the image is very low referential, but at the same time, it is not abstract, or at least, it is not "abstract" in the sense we usually understand. Maybe this is due to the fact that I do not longer understand what is meant by abstraction. I know that a white wall is abstract, an idea can be abstract, mathematics, but painting? If I remember correctly, Russian artists were doing abstract stuff a long time ago. I even think they stopped doing it after a while. " Michel Frère
This painter, draftsman, sculptor and photographer was trained at La Cambre in Brussels. In the 1980s he promptly experienced success, before disappearing prematurely in 1999 at the age of 38. He was active in Brussels and New York.
Characterized by sedimentation, superpositions of layers of paint, the work of Michel Frère aims at the alliance of opacity and light. His oeuvre transforms reality by sweeping figurative elements through matter. It is an impression of monochrome massiveness that emanates from his paintings and sculptures, kneaded and always Matterist. His paintings fit neither into a trend nor into a certain fashion. It transcends time while being anchored in, questioning the history of painting at the same time.
Giving the impression to the viewer to be caught up in a bottomless pit for a journey to the centre of pictorial matter and to matter in general, his work pushes the worldly limits and creates a sense of vertigo. His huge paintings are to be read as abstract paintings, including brown, black and dull green with brightly lit chips quietly bubbling to the surface. Thick textures that are infinitely moving, without beginning or end, from which the world seems to arise to die. Michel Frère refused to conform to fashionable tendencies, drawing exclusively on the source of intuition by which he intended to capture the world.
Albert Baronian organized the first solo exhibition of Michel Frère in December 1985, at his gallery in Knokke. This was followed by a large number of solo and group exhibitions.