Bertrand Peret, “The Hanging Garden”
Watercolor, acrylic paint and pastel on paper
2020
43,7×33,7 cm
(unframed)
“We don’t live in a space that’s neutral and blank; we don’t live, die, love in the rectangle of a sheet of paper. We live, die, love in a space that’s a grid, cut up, variegated, with light and dark areas, on different levels, with steps, cavities, bumps, regions that are harder than others, crumbling, penetrable, porous.
There are regions of passage, streets, trains, subways; there are regions open to momentary pause − cafés, cinemas, beaches, hotels, and then there are the closed regions of rest and being at home. Yet, among these places that are distinguished from each other, there are those that are absolutely different: places that are opposed to all the others, that are destined in some way to efface them, neutralize them and purify them. These are in some way counter-spaces. These counter-spaces, these localized utopias.”
This excerpt from a radio conference, which Michel Foucault gave in 1966 to define the notion of heterotopia, could in a way summarize Bertrand Peret’s relationship to life and art, especially painting.
Influenced by the sport´s world, Bertrand paints as he runs; generally, in forests that are hilly, bumpy, sometimes muddy, definitively on contrasted grounds. He likes the run not to be smooth or linear.
He runs with a goal, however this goal is not always very clear; if today he has to reach that red chalet nestled in the heart of the forest, he will totally engage in this mission but, still, he remains open to possible drifts. These misleadings are what matters, what drives him deeply. Although he can go over the same bump several times in a row for performance, play or comfort, the path is never the same.
In his art as in his life, he moves forward, trying each time to reach a little further, testing his endurance and relying on what he knows, on what he has mastered.
He accepts the error and the wandering. He does not erase, neither retrace his steps, assuming accidents, mistakes, tears, splashes and drips. He also pushes the limits of painting, experiencing a great deal of mediums – including sound and light, and just as many forms to explore and inhabit all kinds of spaces.
Graduated from the Fine Arts School of Bordeaux in 1996, Bertrand Peret spent 20 years operating in the contemporary art world, first nationally and then internationally, expatriating between 2005 and 2016 in Asia. Visual artist, curator, dj and graphic designer, currently art teacher, he is influenced among others by Basquiat, Warhol, Kippenberger, Oehlen, Van Gogh, Courbet and Caravage, but also by street art, by the underground universe of electronic music, as well as by the theories of Nicolas Bourriaud, Hakim Bey and Michel Foucault.
