1st Act : Selfportraits

From Saturday Febrary 7 to Saturday Febrary 28, 2015

The title of the exhibition, Please, try again, directly evokes what is central to the work of Bernard Gaube : the restarting the restarting. To address this issue in the most eloquent way, the choice has been made to show in this first act works of the same size, 46 x 37 cm, each one incorporating the unique theme of the self-portrait. Strictly restricting the field of vision has for purpose to highlight the precarious status of each version presented.

In the practice of Bernard Gaube, the accomplished painting is never an unsurpassable culmination but remains as provisional, partial, contested, response to the question asked. Barely finished, the new versions already foresees different paths the next releases will borrow. The end result is a valid assumption temporarily retained and archived in the form of a picture. Nothing is provided. Nothing will be prioritized.

The painter does not seek to strengthen his writing, to lead gradually towards a mature form that would have the right to reproduce naturally. Instead he seeks to deconstruct and contract patiently to resume without ever repeating. «Each new implementation of a painting, a drawing, is an anxiety generator, an indicative of impotence, loss of acquired means «. In doing so, the painting known as figurative is showing off as burden and fully aware of its limitations, in tune with current issues.

2nd Act : Recent paintings

From thursday March 5 to Saturday April 4, 2015

Although the works shown in this second act are more diverse than in the first, they are all marked by the constant concern of fracture and discontinuity. As if, once accepted the fact that the painting is doomed to extinction, the most radical challenge was to use the debris, piece by piece, and patiently reconstruct a set of proposals. This artistic strategy does not lead to a form of expression that would try to believe again in the power of the image or sense. More modestly, the ambition here is restricted to a breath, to reinstall a strand of precarious life in the field of painting. One should not see the slightest nostalgia for an exhausted art, but the only answer to the irrational, incomprehensible or unacceptable urge to take the brushes.

Since the seventies, many artists have dropped the pictorial space in favor of new mediums. Bernard Gaube, pursuing a childhood dream got locked inside it. So he could only lead his questioning in a limited scope. It is clear that he has traveled up and down without conserving his energy. And the answers he propounds, whatever their fragility, invite the sight to follow step by step the daring meanders in which the are built.