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Plein jour Jean-Baptiste C A Bernadet Entrée C 02.07 — 04.12.2022 C G C D E F I H C B La Citadelle A Untitled (Guided by the Stars) B Untitled (Flying Colors) C Untitled (Sign) D Untitled (Feelings) E Untitled (For the Boy with Golden Hair) Untitled (For the Boy with Liquid Eyes) Untitled (For the Boy who Runs Away) F Sans Titre (Ritournelle) G Sans Titre (Réservoir) en H Untitled (With my back to the world) I Sans Titre (Les Choses Confuses, les Nouvelles Inventions) J Sans Titre (Asile) La Citadelle Opening hours : Place Emmanuel Philibert Everyday 06230 Villefranche-sur-Mer July-September 04 93 76 33 43 10 a.m. – 7 p.m. [email protected] October – December 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. This exhibition is held by the Municipality of Villefranche-sur-Mer, the team of La Citadelle and its museums, with the support of Almine Rech and FABA (Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte) with the support of Instagram landscape, monumental and architec- J Sans Titre (Asile) The exhibition Plein jour invites you to a poetic stroll through La tural. The title, With my back to the world, In-situ intervention Citadelle, a 16th century military fortress that has since been borrowed from the painter Agnes Martin, 2022 transformed into a Center of Arts & Cultural projects. From July 2 to induces both a displacement of the Young hearts, all is favorable to you, spectator and a discourse that the work Make the best of a fleeting happiness. December 4 2022, this exceptional architectural heritage will host itself addresses to all viewers. In the winter of our years, love reigns the works of Jean-Baptiste Bernadet, a French artist born in 1978 no more. who divides his time between Belgium, France and the United I  ans Titre (Les Choses Confuses, les S The beautiful days we lose are lost forever. States. Trained at the Beaux-Arts in Rennes and at La Cambre in Nouvelles Inventions), Recycled high density polyethylene Armide, Lully et Quinault, Paris, 1686 Brussels, Jean-Baptiste Bernadet is an artist beyond all temporality, Variable dimensions not to say timeless. His canvases, but also his glazed lava stones and 2022 bronzes offer palettes with colors that are sometimes vivid and Before the diffusion of colored glass, sometimes soft, cascades of colors, kaleidoscopic effects, infinite some Romanesque churches used thin slices of alabaster for their stained-glass shades: blue, pink, yellow, and many others, in a palette that never windows, like the Duomo of Orvieto in seems to end. The contemplative works of the artist, most of them Umbria. Through its opacity, alabaster— made for this exhibition and never exhibited before, are to be perhaps even better than stained glass— discovered in an in-situ experience. captured a desire for light, and through it, the search for God. The appeal of this material is obvious to Bernadet, who is interested in the idea of painting as a screen, at the same time a support for projection, a translucent filter, and an opalescent and blurred vision of the world. Here, the collaboration with a Brussels company at the forefront of recycling products from the plastic industry proposes a contemporary and virtuous version of the stained glass windows, in one of the watchtowers of the citadel. The title of the work is borrowed from Leonardo da Vinci, who recommended painters to be inspired by “stones of mixed colors,” “because in confused things the mind finds material for new inventions.” A  Untitled (Guided by the Stars) C  Untitled (Sign) E  Untitled (For the Boy with exposure, of angle, of perception. These Three colors neon, controller Glazed lava stone Golden Hair) images, whose title Ritournelles evokes 150 × 150 cm ∅ 67 × 2,5 cm Untitled (For the Boy with the passage of time—whether a few weeks 2022 2020 Liquid Eyes) between the two photos of la citadelle’s After night falls, the main facade of Made of glazed lava stone fired at 970 Untitled (For the Boy who open-air theater, or a few seconds La Citadelle is adorned with a neon sign degrees, these discs illustrate the artist’s Runs Away) between those of a young man with reminiscent of the bars of the Côte d’Azur desire to create paintings that contain Bronze, oil paint golden hair, recalling the theme of and their seductive, flashing signs. The worlds. Both abstract and evocative of 45 × 27 × 16 cm lemon—convey a feeling of intimacy and neon’s motif is directly borrowed from a landscapes, the series of Signs plays with 35 × 27 × 12 cm serenity. secret element hidden in the outer walls the accidents of the material to create 39 × 27 × 13 cm of the building: a very old graffiti repre- images. We find this same sensation of 2022 G  Sans Titre (Réservoir) senting a ship, perhaps sketched by a aesthetic displacement in pietre paesine, Considered by Bernadet as paintings, Spray water-based paint on walls sailor waiting for his imminent departure Florentine limestone, of which the artist even as tableaux, these sculptures present 2022 on his next sea voyage. Like a nocturnal is particularly fond, and whose marbled traces of polychromy added by the artist Painting over the traces left by previous guide, the luminous signal and its glow patterns, appearing through geological on material that bears the traces of its visitors who wished to leave their marks transform the infinitesimal, the invisible, transformations, suggest landscapes, assembly process. Perfect evocation, for of love, friendship and life is to highlight into a sentinel, the artist giving another without a precise definition of scale the artist, of the Mediterranean sea as a the strata of time and to evoke the place life, another meaning, to the history of between infinitely large and infinitely souvenir of vacations, a land of plenty, the of the artist in front of the architectural the place. Finally, the sequence of the small. Their title evokes cosmic signs as citrus fruit is both the golden apple of the monument and its history. Without really animation allows for multiple readings by well as auguries that can be read during garden of the Hesperides, an edible sun, touching the building, by intervening in a separating the different elements of the divinatory acts. and an ambiguous and complex symbol of minimal way, Bernadet deposits a tiny original drawing: the sea that becomes a life or love, represented in numerous layer of color: a ray of light at the end of life line, the sail that takes on the aspect D  Untitled (Feelings) vanities; a luminous and liquid fruit, the day indirectly caresses the walls, and of a Polynesian navigation chart, Oil on canvas always acidic, sometimes bitter, but also provokes a nuanced diffraction, seeming portholes that transform into lemons, 380 × 510 cm (in two parts) suave and generous. The golden leaves to be naturally produced by some inci- then into a constellation of stars. 2022 recall Roman laurel wreaths, awarded to dence of light. The gesture fades away to Technically the only actual painting in the poets as well as to victors—gods and men. let the visitor contemplate the wall and B  Untitled (Flying Colors) exhibition, presented in the Chapel of The image of the lemon, as an offering, the memories it contains. Stopping the Print on polyester Saint Elmo as an echo of the eighteen- echoes the intimate universe of the artist, passage of time, the artist makes the 400 × 600 cm th-century fresco that partly survives with both literary and sentimental watchtower a sanctuary and transforms it 2022 there, Untitled (Feelings) was made with references. into a work of art. The subject of Jean-Baptiste Bernadet’s an almost dry brush, depositing very thin painting is painting itself. Between layers of oil paint on the surface of the F Sans Titre (Ritournelle) H  Untitled (With my back to the world) abstraction and landscape painting, each canvas. It evokes both the rag used to Pigment print on baryta paper Glazed lava stone of his works takes into account its clean paintbrushes and the walls of the 11 × 15 cm 30 × 30 × 1,5 cm, exhibition context and the viewers it studio, splattered over time with all sorts Edition 1/3 + 1 A.P. Total dimensions approx. 78 × 1 300 cm addresses. Bernadet tries to leave their of drips and marks, accumulated traces 2022 2022 meaning as open as possible, so that that form a kind of accidental, cloudy, Whatever medium Jean-Baptiste Bernadet To make a wall transparent, to imagine viewers can enjoy the freedom of projec- and undefined image. More than in any uses, he believes that his work is always the sea or the sky behind it: Bernadet ting their own experiences. Here, the flag, other of the artist’s works, in this series about painting, and these photographs tries here to reopen a perspective on the on which one of the artist’s paintings is of paintings titled Feelings the artist are no exception to the rule. These pairs ramparts. In this part of the citadel, the reproduced, is an invitation to visit the captures the delicate balance between the of images do not seek a photographic sea is hidden: by investing unexpected exhibition at La Citadelle. The flag of work of art’s obstinate permanence as a truth but replay the variations often spaces, in line with his work on glazed painting itself can be seen from afar, its definitive object and the liquid and present in his series of paintings and lava stones, he creates an abstract colors dancing with the wind. fleeting state of our emotions. show a temporal gap, a difference of panorama, a landscape within the