The Spirit of Painting: The ‘Painting with Cinema’
« With Bernard Gast’s work, a whole new aesthetic concept is born: ‘Paintings with Cinema!’. Each of his works is entirely derived from movies and realized with 35 mm film strips from Cinema. The artist begins by making a transparent ‘Matrix’.to say an object, a tinkering and poetic that he creates with the very material of these films of Cinema» (1).
(1) Ann MICHALSON – Paintings with Cinema by Bernard Gast (2021) ; according to ‘Ann Michalson – Bernard Gast : Cine Painting’ in ‘October edition’ book – I Gallery Editions, ART collection
The ‘Matrix’ of ‘Let’s frame the rout’ (2002)
Work offered in 3 Artist's Proof (0,42 X 0,63m) or a large print run (1,26 x 1,89 m)
Born amidst the noise and fury of the Algerian War, Bernard Gast spends much of his childhood in La Rochelle.
The Humanities are at the heart of his intellectual and artistic journey, with, for example, a DEA in Philosophy ( Psychoanalysis & Aesthetics).
After ten years in institutional communication, he lets go of the relative security of wage labor to devote himself entirely to Art... but he still preserves time for the practice of Psychoanalysis and philosophical research (Aesthetics).
His creation essentially takes three forms:
This energy – both practical and theoretical – liberates a unique way of creating, a singular style... A discovery that Bernard Gast theorizes and condenses as follows: "I paint with the 35 mm film of Cinema". His "visuals" suggest all the historical ideas and forms of Painting in particular, and art in general (Abstract, Kineticism, New Figuration, Pop Art, Surrealism, Photojournalism, Poetic Realism, New Wave cinema, etc).
About twenty artists worldwide reflect and realize, directly or indirectly, a plastic work related to cinema: John Baldassari, Jeff Wall,...
Certainly, Bernard Gast's work expresses a great diversity in form, but its unity mainly emerges from the approach. With only "raw material" from film scraps, his artistic language constantly evokes Painting. The creation of this contemporary visual artist – while breaking free from its material – nevertheless refers to the Spirit of Painting.
This is likely what led Olivier Michelon * to say: Bernard Gast's work is more pictorial than a Painting!
* Olivier Michelon, former Curator at the Centre Georges Pompidou for The movement of images (art, Cinema) & Chief Curator from Vuitton Foundation
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Bellina Léon – Jean-José Rieu – Philippe Delaunay – Amanda Lear (France) – Véronique Bernard (Laboratoires Bayer, Suisse) – Dr. Heike Troll (Solvias Basel, Suisse) – Dr. Norbert Müller (Suisse) – Hans-Jürgen Schmidt (Allemagne) – Atsuo Shimada (Japon) – Claude Seror (Israël) ...
“I paint with Cinema!"
