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16/11/2012

Thomas Bernardet

Motinternational, Bruxelles

MOTINTERNATIONAL Brussels is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Thomas Bernardet.

Thomas Bernardet in conversation with Constance Barrère Dangleterre

C : Does the selection of images you use in your works come from your own photographs ?
T : Yes, they have a « found » aspect, but they are always photos I’ve taken myself.
C : What do you mean by « found » ?
T : I’m talking about a sort of obviousness. My photos tend to focus on things that belong to everyone.
C : I’m wondering about the status of your work ‘Pas d’entrée vidéo’. (No video input). Is it a unique work or an edition?
T : This piece is unique. I took the phrase from one of my notebooks and had it made into an adhesive cut-out that I fixed onto a waste sheet that had been used to clean a press before printing a lithograph. I make these pieces like drawings or paintings, but using a commercial advertising technique. The process of digitizing a handwritten text, mechanically reproducing it and then applying it manually to paper comes from a desire to introduce a gestural aspect into the technical reproducibility of the work of art.
C : Is the photo in the collage ‘Reklaw Snave’ well and truly positioned upside down?
T : Yes. The lettering is also reversed. It is simply the name ‘Walker Evans’ spelled backwards. Evans is an artist who has influenced me a lot. This piece was an important milestone for me : turning one of the inventors of modern photography upside down, reversing the image itself to see if it could become abstract while remaining figurative and documentary. I like the story in which Kandinsky describes how one of his paintings got turned upside down in his studio and became a key element in his progress towards abstraction.
C : The photographic format in your art sustains countless manipulations: inversions, superimpositions, vanishings… How does this process start?
T : I take quite a lot of photographs. I usually archive them in files that I call 'Documents de travail' (Work documents), it’s a sort of re-interpretation of Eugene Atget’s 'Documents pour artistes' (Documents for artist). They later re-emerge – sometimes after several years – once I have become sufficiently detached from the reasons and the context in which I took the picture. Then I make test prints which I manipulate and live with for a while. When I am
sufficiently detached from them, I start making associations between images, “damaging” them as if they didn’t belong to me. This is where the series of 'Documents Travaillés' (Worked Documents) arises from.

Image: Documents Travaillés / Satoru-William; collage of photographic images, frame; 50x65cm; 2012

Private View 17th November 6-9pm

MOTINTERNATIONAL
Rue Vandenbrandenstraat 1, 1000 Brussels, Belgium
Open
Wednesday - Saturday 11 - 6
and by appointment.
The gallery is closed on public holidays.

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