LE VILLAGE ROYAL BY BRUNO CATALANO
Visit us and discover Bruno Catalano’s exhibition till September 10th.
The universal theme of travel has always inspired Bruno Catalano. Since he started to knead clay, hundreds of “Travellers” went out of his feverish hands, populating his studio while awaiting an unknown destination. His first works were more conventional, they stayed tied to the earth element and the series that followed have gained in expressiveness and finesse. These astonishing works, with their dashed bodies and the determined lack of volume, invite the viewer to mentally reconstruct the missing parts of the sculptures. Van Gogh goes away, with a suitcase in his hand, to the Provencal countryside, but he is in an almost abstract lightness, open to wind and light. Is it not our destiny that Bruno Catalano gives us to see and meditate on ? Through his statuary he replays the adventure of mankind, always in-between two shores, repelling all the boundaries.
China blue is a dedication to all these men and women who arrived in Marseille to work there, but it is also a tribute to the adoptive home that is this city, with its harbour as epicenter. With its patina, china blue -the color of the overalls – gives allusion and reminds us of the uniform of the worker and the sailor. From this sculpture emanates a story that speaks to all the Marseillais people, in particular to the sea workers, to the dockers, to all those who unloaded the boats on the industrial port, whom Bruno Catalano was a part of, this immigrant from Morocco with a simple suitcase.
The draped of the sculpture covers the complete silhouette, invisible, Non finito represents many ways, touch ups, back and forth on a clay work of art. To keep a supple and malleable material, the sculptor has to dress it with a wet cloth every evening.
Traces of a mobile trip, or motionless. Because the Traveler is not the only one who has left everything to dream and join an elsewhere, because the Traveler, shoes on foot, suitcase in hand, in his right and dignified posture, represents each one of us, Bruno Catalano created Triptych, a clear and limpid metaphor for our human condition, defeating the taboo of aging and death. Whatever our path, wanderer or more sedentary, here is what will remain of us, ephemeral travellers on this Earth: a bit of chipped material, derisory. A pair of shoes, a suitcase, metaphors of the remainder of each human being after his passage. In the maturity of his work, the artist reveals more and more the concept of time going by; with Triptych, he proposes a crude and eloquent emblem of our mortality, simple travellers of life.
Among the many Travelers, L’aviateur has a special status. In the imaginary world of the artist, this monumental sculpture offers two contrasting faces, relating both the war and achievement. On one side, it arouses bombings pictures, damage to humanity, the nature and the architecture, it symbolises a kind of plunging omnipotence from heaven ; on the other side it remembers a specific dexterity, a taste for adventure, some attraction to danger, which is admired and legitimate its pedestal. This unique character represents the history of many people, getting into a plane without knowing where they are going. L’aviateur is a leading above all of the Traveler because he is in the air.
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Les Galeries Bartoux : +33 1 42 66 36 63
