OPENING ON MARCH 20 STARTING 6 PM

The gallery Polad-Hardouin is pleased to welcome the solo show of Gérard Alary, Matière et existence.

Gérard Alary seizes the occasion, with this new series to refocus on himself, on the human and pictorial experiences he has gathered through all these years. They have created a multifaceted personal landscape where he gleans the subject of his painting, as if it was nourishing from itself. This interior journey leads naturally to self-portrait.

The face has long formed the central subject of his works, but Gérard Alary nows concentrates on the body. Painting, in its density and ruggedness becomes flesh, a flesh that bears the scars of its own personal story that turns to be universal. 

In a recent interview with Olivier Kaeppelin, Gérard Alary describes his relationship with painting : "My relationship with painting is a simple one. It allows me a precise construction of an assessment, of a chore, but it’s mainly an awareness of a darker side of myself and of the world. There is life on the one hand, where you are supposed to be happy, and on the other, there is painting where I cannot help myself being in front of a « darkness », what Enzo Cucchi calls « il buio » in Italian. The question then is how to express it. Unwilling to represent it realistically and incapable to deliver this type of project, I seek the (perhaps artificial) means, what Francis Bacon called « controlled risks »,  which are those of painting in its essence. The painting is a visual art combining perception and thought, it shouldn’t be about storytelling."