Jean-Baptiste Bernadet
Untitled (Fugue), 2023
Born in Paris in 1978, lives and works in Brussels.
A distinctive colorist, Jean-Baptiste Bernadet creates within each canvas an atmospheric cosmos, in which nature, emotion, and psyche take center stage. They oscillate somewhere between abstraction and landscape painting: incandescent shades of orange, full and honest purples, sulfuric yellows, deep grays, and melancholic pale greens produce worlds in which a landscape, its unique memory, and the imagination interact, directed by the eye and the mind. In Bernadet’s work, the gaze, insistent and fleeting, melancholy and celebratory, fuses with feeling, envisioned as a suite of emotions, a patchwork of romantic reminiscences and introspections, rapturous exhilaration kindled by the passage of time. Bernadet channels the spirit of Proust in his intimate relationship to memory, his deep desire to transcend linear time. If the ultimate aim of his painting is painting itself, it grants viewers an immense freedom, that of projecting their own experiences onto the canvas.
Bernadet solo exhibitions include, among others, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen (2020), Almine Rech in Brussels (2020, 2016), Marfa Book Company in Marfa, Texas (2019, 2015, 2013), Alon Segev in Tel Aviv (2019, 2017), Almine Rech in Paris and Mascota in Mexico (2018), Valentin in Paris (2017, 2015), Michael Jon & Alan in Miami (2017), Almine Rech Gallery in London (2016), Retrospective in Hudson, NY, American Contemporary in New York City, Rod Barton in London (2014), Karma in New York City (2014), Torri in Paris, Renwick in New York City (2011), the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas (2010).
Since 2001, Bernadet has participated in numerous group shows, including the Song Museum in Beijing and Almine Rech Gallery in Shanghai, Muhka in Antwerp (2019), NICC in Brussels, Halsey McKay in East Hampton, Ribordy in Geneva (2018), Musée de Valence (2016), Almine Rech in Paris, Michael Jon & Alan in Miami, Neochrome in Turin (2015), WIELS in Brussels (2015, 2010 and 2009), Valentin in Paris, Ricou Gallery and Super Dakota Gallery in Brussels (2014), Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles (2013), Angstrom in Dallas, Texas, Klemm's Gallery in Berlin (2012), 8 rue Saint Bon in Paris, White Flags in Saint Louis, Missouri (2011), Galerie Crèvecoeur in Paris (2009), Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tourcoing (2006).
