Bernard Frize

After a first solo exhibition in this very place in 1988, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris dedicates a new exhibition to Bernard Frize, focused on the presentation of a hundred or so paintings of the last ten years, punctuated by works from the end of the 80’s and the beginning of the 90’s. The artist has designed the path, following no chronological order but a work affinity strategy based on sequences, connections or tensions as imperceptible they may be. 

From the outset, the visitor discovers on the walls digital enlargements of Heawood, (sculptures exhibited in the Museum collections), a plastic concrete expression of the system made by the scientist Heawood.  Later on, works from different techniques face each others : paintings from the series Suite automatique (1996), Marine et Forêt (1997) (silk-screen printing and felt-tip pen on paper), small paintings of the series Solitaire (1999). Then, Rosta (2002), in the same order spirit, vertical or horizontal, of coloured plans, leads the visitor to very different works where the sinuous and meandering line of a sole lick of paint fills the picture space : 35%vrai, 60%faux (1986-1999), Marmara (2000). Other techniques are displayed in very contrasting and older paintings like Nain (1989), Jumelle (1990) or more recent ones like Apollonia (2000), Bold (2001), Boswell (2001), Conducteur D (2001), Ebréchée (2001), etc.

In an other room, a group of small paintings is presented, based on the same method, Lucky et Portable (1999-2000), which pattern is a “braid” carried out with six hands, interlaced brushes until the colour exhaustion. The central space is meant to be “meditative” and should enable the understanding of the evolution that led to the various period works development. These are confronted to their formal difference or connection, resulting from experiences and methods every time renewed: Deux bonheurs (1989), Aran (1992), Othon (1994), NBCa (1998), Mixte (1999), Remoon (2001), Plück (2001), Armes (2001), etc. The two last rooms, more spectacular, exhibit large paintings: a group OJB, OVM and BJR (1988), DCAB (1994), Quelle (1998), Distraction (2000), Coordonné (2001), a recent series Chouppa, Viator, Meroton (2002-2003), etc. In the hall, the visitor can admire at the beginning of the path Arrangement (2002), Karolin (2003) and Aunno (2003).

From the start, Bernard Frize is forever proposing a new approach of painting by demystifying at the same time the pictorial practice and the role of the artist.  Trained at a time dominated by conceptual and minimal art, influenced by Marxism, he includes in his painting the notions of work, spent time and production tools. Rejecting the idea of the artist as a demiurge, he maintains a distance in opting for a voluntary withdrawal, the absence of any expressiveness, illusionism and composition. In the process of creation, he gives more importance to incidence than to chance as to the use of an economy of means carried out to experiment new procedures and technical constraints involving, if necessary, the recourse to other hands, (his assistants).

A process is put in position to exhibit the materiality of painting, each painting resulting of a unique experience, a moment of intensity in a concentrated time. Even if the exhibition reflects the act of painting, his works maintain a relation to the image : they are often related to items or elements from the reality : curtains, bars, caterpillars, braids, etc., demonstration of the artist’s willingness not to be out of touch with the real, only guarantee of sense. 

Declaring his indifference to colours by giving no priority to one over another, refuting formalism, Bernard Frize carries out a work from its constitutive elements : painting format, brushes size, available colours, to maintain the highest possible neutrality. In so doing, he experiences all the conceivable techniques, preserving the pleasure of the doing and a certain game. Built following a complicated mix between mastery and laisser-faire, his paintings require the active gaze of the spectator, attracted to redo the path of the brushes on canvas, in order to understand how they are made. Thus, they reveal their power of seduction, constantly renewed by the countless possibilities Bernard Frize gives himself to reinvent painting. Pressetext

Bernard Frize