Bernard Pras
Anamorphosis free figure

15^th April 02^nd June 2012

Opening reception: Sunday, 15^th April from 2-6 pm
The artist Bernard Pras will be present.

For the start of the spring, Photo Edition Berlin is showing Anamorphosis Free figure, a Photo project of the French artist BERNARD PRAS. This exhibition is his first solo-show in the Berlin gallery.

About the work:
Starting from a photograph, Bernard Pras creates amazing pieces of art, by adding ordinary objects like used toys, tools, pieces of rubber, or whatever else you can think of. From up-close his works look like nothing more than random stacks of stuff, but from a certain angle and distance, they reveal their true beauty.

Bernard Pras was born in 1952 and studied fine arts in Toulouse. In 1997, having painted during 20 years, he found a new way of expression. Working from a drawing, he collects heteroclite objects, according to their colour, their shape, and even their sense. Then he assembles them, observing the progress of his work through his camera. Then appears the subject, whose image will be fixed.

After an extensive and wide-ranging training, the artist Bernard Pras slowly began to focus on portraiture while experimenting with many different techniques.

Benard Pras adds an extra dimension of complexity: he distributes the individual elements that constitute his portraits in rooms - frequently locations chosen with great care - that participate in the creation of the composite artworks. But in the end it requires a camera lens to bring them together in a photograph, and to turn them into recognizable portraits.

He makes use of anamorphosis, which is then retracted by the cameras lens. This is not the place to reflect on the pool of associated components he draws on. However, the resulting images are so powerful that one feels as though someone has fully understood Arcimboldos method of composite art and has catapulted it into the present.

In these large-scale compositions, seemingly filling the space of his studio in a chaotic and haphazard way, Pras is able with the aid of his skill in rendering perspective and his unrivalled photographic eye - to breathe life into his imaginary portraits that document a sense of irony and humour.
More than making a simple copy, Pras gets to grips with building a mental landscape, in such a way that, if it's not the real hero who emerges, it's an emanation who resembles him trait for trait, lit up by the same cardinal qualities or faults.

Reliefs, pigments and pixels, the objects intervene and accumulate like brushstrokes, lines, commas, reminders, pictorial gimmicks. An Eiffel Tower turns into a nose, an upturned chair into the plane of a cheek, a ball is an eyes, a shell is an ear, and a fork is a fore arm in this orgy worthy of an adding up la Prevert (Interactivity! an object can change roles and take on new charges of varying intensities for the sake of another composition).

Despite everything, the problematic of the choice of subject and the strategy by which it reach it, remain intact.

Text by Christian Louis Eclimont

Artist website:
http://www.bernardpras.fr/


Bernard Pras
Anamorphosen – Figure Libre

16. April – 2. Juni 2012

Vernissage: Sonntag, 15. April von 14-18 Uhr
Der Künstler ist anwesend.


PHOTO EDITION BERLIN zeigt zum Frühlingsanfang in der Ausstellung „Anamorphosen - Figure Libre“ Fotografien des Franzosen Bernard Pras. Es ist die erste Ausstellung des Künstlers in der Berliner Galerie.
Ausgehend von Zeichnungen oder fotografischen Vorlagen ordnet Bernard Pras gewöhnliche Gegenstände zu unverwechselbaren Kunstwerken an. Aus der Nähe wirken diese Objekte wie zufällige Anhäufungen, aber mit einem gewissen Abstand und aus einem bestimmten Winkel, entfalten sie ihre unerwartete Schönheit.
Bernard Pras, geboren 1952, studierte Bildende Kunst in Toulouse. Seit 1997, nach mehr als zwanzig Jahren der Malerei, entwickelte er seine in der Fotografiegeschichte einzigartige Ausdrucksform, die ihn in Frankreich bereits berühmt machte. Er bedient sich dabei der Technik der sogenannten Anamorphose, die der Ausstellung auch ihren Titel gab.
Als eine Anamorphose bezeichnet man seit dem Mittelalter Bilder, die nur unter einem bestimmten Blickwinkel erkennbar sind. Es war dies eine Möglichkeit der Verschlüsselung von Botschaften und brachte es in vielen Kirchen Italiens zu einer wahren Meisterschaft und Blüte. Seit der Renaissance wird Anamorphose bei der illusionistischen Deckenmalerei eingesetzt, um die Deckenwölbungen und Unregelmäßigkeiten perspektivisch vom Standpunkt eines angenommenen Betrachters (von unten blickend) auszugleichen.
Mit seinen großen, anscheinend chaotisch sein Atelier oder andere Orte übersäenden Installationen, haucht Pras - dank seiner Beherrschung der Perspektive und seines unvergleichlichen photographischen Auges - den imaginären Sujets zeitgenössisches Leben ein.

Künstler Webseite:
www.bernardpras.fr