Pierre Buraglio — 94 imprimés / dessins — Catherine Putman Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: September 10 → October 26, 2016

The Galerie Catherine Putman presents “94” imprimés dessins, an exhibition of the work of Pierre Buraglio. The exhibition, on the theme of the Val-de-Marne, is a display of works on paper: drawings, watercolours, and a large and original collection of printed works.

Recent drawings and watercolours— selected from the artist’s sketchbooks—of roofs, chimneys, and breaks in the clouds, show that Pierre Buraglio is the tireless observer of this Parisian suburb. Born in 1939 at Charenton, he has always lived and worked in the same house—that of his parents and grandparents, at Maisons-Alfort. This place and its surroundings have always provided a formal and thematic source of inspiration for the artist. The past and the present merge in this part of Pierre Buraglio’s oeuvre, which attests to his fascination with construction, architecture, and town planning. The grandson of an Italian builder, his father, an architect, participated in the reconstruction of the Manche département; his great-uncle—uncle Sérafino—and his brothers Pietro and Angello helped to construct the famous artificial rocks in Vincennes, drawings of which can be seen throughout his sketchbooks.

Pierre Buraglio, 94 bleu, 2016 Print — 272 × 152 cm Editions Galerie Catherine Putman — Production Studio Franck Bordas

The exhibition also focuses on the experimental nature of Pierre Buraglio’s printed work. With the active collaboration of Studio Franck Bordas, he has produced two extremely large prints (which can be produced in varying sizes), especially designed for the gallery’s walls, and a wallpaper—with the standard width of 53 cm—that is based on the repetition of the design. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the Galerie Catherine Putman has been working very closely with Pierre Buraglio on his printed works: the gallery has produced many lithographs, serigraphs, offset prints, and pigment inkjet prints, on which the artist generally adds highlights with ink or paint, collages, fastenings, or variations in the printing supports. Working together, with the help of the printers, they have forged a unique approach to multiple techniques. Pierre Buraglio’s most recent pieces, created in 2015 and displayed in the exhibition, also explore the potential of the digital pigment printing process: urban landscapes ‘94 A & B’, with different kinds of paper or heightened with oil, and a suite of four interpretations of the Rock of Vincennes: ‘Uncle Sérafino’s Rock’ on an innovative microfibre fabric stretched over a frame.