Bernard Piffaretti: No Chronology
29 Apr - 11 Jun 2016
Bernard Piffaretti
No Chronology
29.04. – 11.06.2016
Bernard Piffaretti paints painting. In his paintings the artist duplicates what he created on one side of the vertically divided canvas. This self-referential method reveals his artistic practice: Piffaretti repeats the painting process. In doing so, he explicitly rejects any technical facilities. It’s the reproduction’s little deviations that underline the authorship and inscribe the painter in his work. Hence through duplicating Piffaretti distances himself from a seemingly expressive style.
By means of the vertical, Bernard Piffaretti divides his paintings. Instead of closing one part off the other, both elements get united. Questions of hierarchies, original and copy – left or right – turn superfluous by acknowledging the mutual dependence within the formal structure.
The separating moment, discreet in its appearance, opens the communication between both paintings. The whole impact of the painting unfolds upon and over the central perpendicular, the paintings third entity. The examining gaze dynamically moves above the surface(s). Piffaretti opposes a reconstruction of temporality. The artist breaks up the dimension of a linear chronology. What in film theory is called persistence of vision – referring to the optical illusion whereby the human mind imagines a motion in-between two discrete shots – actually denotes the density of movement that deploys from the dividing line.
Despite certain continuities, it is rather the fundamental contrast to the preceding work that characterizes Piffaretti’s method since the early 80’s. No Chronology symbolizes this distinguishing impossibility to retrace a temporal development within the painter’s practice.
Bernard Piffaretti (born 1955 in Saint-Etienne, France), lives and works in Paris. He studied Fine Arts at École régionale des Beaux-Arts de Saint-Etienne. His works have been presented both in numerous solo such as group exhibitions at home and abroad. Recently his works were on view at Andrea Rosen, New York and Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles, at FRAC Franche-Comté, Besançon, at Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, at FRAC Haute-Normandie, Sotteville-lès-Rouen, at Musée d’arte moderne de Saint-Etienne as well as in the past at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin. We are thrilled to announce Bernard Piffaretti’s next solo exhibition at Centre Pompidou, Paris next year.
No Chronology
29.04. – 11.06.2016
Bernard Piffaretti paints painting. In his paintings the artist duplicates what he created on one side of the vertically divided canvas. This self-referential method reveals his artistic practice: Piffaretti repeats the painting process. In doing so, he explicitly rejects any technical facilities. It’s the reproduction’s little deviations that underline the authorship and inscribe the painter in his work. Hence through duplicating Piffaretti distances himself from a seemingly expressive style.
By means of the vertical, Bernard Piffaretti divides his paintings. Instead of closing one part off the other, both elements get united. Questions of hierarchies, original and copy – left or right – turn superfluous by acknowledging the mutual dependence within the formal structure.
The separating moment, discreet in its appearance, opens the communication between both paintings. The whole impact of the painting unfolds upon and over the central perpendicular, the paintings third entity. The examining gaze dynamically moves above the surface(s). Piffaretti opposes a reconstruction of temporality. The artist breaks up the dimension of a linear chronology. What in film theory is called persistence of vision – referring to the optical illusion whereby the human mind imagines a motion in-between two discrete shots – actually denotes the density of movement that deploys from the dividing line.
Despite certain continuities, it is rather the fundamental contrast to the preceding work that characterizes Piffaretti’s method since the early 80’s. No Chronology symbolizes this distinguishing impossibility to retrace a temporal development within the painter’s practice.
Bernard Piffaretti (born 1955 in Saint-Etienne, France), lives and works in Paris. He studied Fine Arts at École régionale des Beaux-Arts de Saint-Etienne. His works have been presented both in numerous solo such as group exhibitions at home and abroad. Recently his works were on view at Andrea Rosen, New York and Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles, at FRAC Franche-Comté, Besançon, at Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, at FRAC Haute-Normandie, Sotteville-lès-Rouen, at Musée d’arte moderne de Saint-Etienne as well as in the past at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin. We are thrilled to announce Bernard Piffaretti’s next solo exhibition at Centre Pompidou, Paris next year.