Bernd Lohaus, Etienne-Martin, José Pedro Croft — Bernard Bouche Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: September 3 → October 8, 2016

José Pedro Croft

1957, Oporto, Portugal

José Pedro Croft diverts daily objects from their original function. What interests him is a feeling of precarious balance between stable and unstable which, according to the artist, «reflects the transitional nature of the world». His sculptures create a complex dialogue with the environment, by means of simple, almost minimalist structures, which combine both the materiality of the object and its formal aspects. Sometimes, his sculptures are strengthened by the use of vivid colours, which are applied so to suggest a perception of the sculpture as a bas-relief. Furthermore, Croft uses mirrors and glass to play with light effects, shadow and reflections in order to create new volumes and an altered sense of space. José Pedro Croft has exhibited extensively across Portugal, Spain and South America including solo exhibitions at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Serralves Foundation, the Berardo Collection, the National Museum Centre of Art Reina Sofia, the Pinacotheca of the State of São Paulo, and at the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro.

Bernd Lohaus, Fleur, 1993 Watercolour — 41,5 × 29,4 cm Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Bernard Bouche, Paris

Bernd Lohaus

Düsseldorf 1940 — Anvers 2010

Bernd Lohaus uses mostly such powerful and dense materials as azobe wood. He prefers the items that have already been used and bear the traces of human industry and time, the ones that are enriched by the past which they witness. A combination of simple, massive and sculptural shapes, sometimes described with strong, enigmatic language fragments, where we encounter mostly prepositions. The set never forms a complete sentence, but puts in space the relationship between words. Of course the intuitive layout of the wood itself is a language.We are showing a rare ensemble by Bernd Lohaus composed of one piece in wax from 2002 accompanied by two watercolours from the Fleurs series, as well as one historical piece from 1967. Recent solo exhibitions include Fremdkörper, Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Belgium 2015 and MAC’s Grand Hornu, Musée des Arts Contemporains, Hornu, Belgium. 2014.

José Pedro Croft, Sem título, 2015 Wood — 235 × 70 × 150 cm Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Bernard Bouche, Paris

Etienne-Martin

Loriol-sur-Drôme 1913 — Paris 1995

In this exhibition we are presenting a confrontation between two important pieces by Etienne-Martin La Nageuse céleste 1958 and Le Bouclier 1969. Étienne-Martin is one of the major artists of the second half of the 20th century. A former member of the Academie Ranson and the ’Témoignage’ group in Lyon, he became influenced by the teachings of Gurjieff and other schools of esoteric thought. He was close to the writer Henri-Pierre Roché and the founders of the Oppède group, set up by Bernard Zehrfuss. In the 1960s, Étienne-Martin won the attention of art critics as different as Michel Tapié, Michel Ragon and Alain Jouffroy, as well as Harald Szeemann, an ardent defender, who made the artist a key figure in the section “Individual Mythologies” at Documenta 5 in Kassel in 1972. Etienne-Martin’s work is extensively represented in the state museums of France, including the Pompidou Centre and the Museum of Modern Art City of Paris.

Bernd Lohaus, Fleur, 2003 Watercolour — 41,5 × 29,4 cm Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Bernard Bouche, Paris