Bruno Dufourmantelle

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.

Angeline Scherf, chief curator at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris