BERNARD FRIZE

For several decades, Bernard Frize’s work has developed in distinctfamilies, each setting its own conditions of emergence throughprotocols and rules that define its operational framework. Thesquare-format paintings in his new series at Perrotin gallery werecreated using brushstrokes of three different widths, interwoveninto grids through juxtaposition and layering that follow a principle ofpermutation between brush widths and their associated colors. Thepaintings consist of three squares nested within one another, formedby twelve brushstrokes that establish a rhythm, superimposing afour-beat tempo—the square form— over a three-beat tempo—thenesting of the three squares. Each gesture applies a layer of colorthat merges with the still-wet color beneath, partially covering it andcreating moiré effects and transparencies to produce a captivating chromatic blur. For the attentive viewer attempting to reconstruct theexact chronology of this architectonics, the compositions ultimatelyreveal the impossibility of faithfully adhering to the initial protocol. Thesequence of four brushstrokes forming the contours of a square showsthat the final stroke cannot simultaneously lie over the previous strokeand beneath the next one, which was the first to be applied. Thus, toachieve the interlocking of this vertiginous architecture, an elementof “cheating” is involved–– precisely because it is impossible. Thetruth supposedly grounded in the rules of the game is transgressed byillusionistic corrections that conceal the technical dead ends inherentin the initial protocol. Cézanne said we are owed “the truth in painting”;Bernard Frize manufactures a simulacrum of it, sealed beneath alayer of resin. Paradoxically, it is by bending the rule at the moment itproves unworkable that he shifts the authority of the protocol towardsomething essential: painting as material, as the reality of layerings,revisions, and adjustments.

The constraints he chooses introduce a certain distance, yet farfrom being coercive, they also open up a freedom, a willingnessto embrace chance, the unexpected, and the sudden bleeding ofone color into another in an unpredictable harmony. This freedomemerges at the exact moment where the rule encounters the irreducibleunpredictability of paint itself: the viscosity of acrylic, the pull of gravityon matter flowing vertically or spreading across a horizontal plane, theresistance of the brush, the deviations caused by the variable density ofpigments, the dominance of one color over another, the subordinationof a value inflected by its neighbor, rhythms unexpectedly born ofstrident tones working against the harmonics... Painting becomes anegotiation in which an ethics plays out, one attuned to cooperation,relationship, and the interplay between constraints and accidents,intention and material consequence. Each series redefines the termsof this relationship, from the rigorous discipline imposed upon thepaint to its emancipation, where it asserts its own logic, spreading,thickening, blurring, stratifying, and contaminating itself through runs,clumps, and deposits. In these discreet excesses, the paint reveals its autonomy, retaining a memory of its liquid state and a capacity toinsist and resist. Let us not forget that the first viewers of a paintingare the artists themselves 1, fascinated by what eludes control, by theemergence of color, light, and astonishing chromatic arrangements.They are keenly aware of the irreversible tipping points of a mixturethat, against all expectation, can become epiphanic.

The viewer is invited to mentally retrace the journey, to imagine thestages, to sense the moments when the paint slows, thickens, loosens,refuses, yields. If the rules of the game led only to the game itself, thepainting would be reducible to a labyrinthine image whose executionone could simply reconstruct. Yet Bernard Frize’s paintings are alsosensory, sensual, organic bodies, conveying the pleasure of painting,of watching paint open its chromatic corollas at the intersection ofbrushstrokes and the unruly flow of matter. This sensuality arises froma field of experience where viscosity, pressure, speed, adhesion,brilliance, saturation, and transparency become the tonalities of time,repetition, divergence, and variation. As Jean Frémon observes ofRobert Ryman, “We discuss the ins and outs, the ends and the means,yet in reality we know nothing; nothing of what it truly means to take,with the tip of a brush, some color from a palette and place it on apanel.” 2 One is led to appreciate both the rigor of the system andthe beauty of color. And to accept that these two dimensions do notcancel each other out, that the rule does not suppress the pleasureof making and seeing but instead holds it near, embracing it with apersistent question: What becomes of painting when it is allowed toact, when it is listened to, when one organizes the conditions for itsemergence rather than dictating its outcome?

Jean-Charles Vergne.Curator, author and director of the upcoming Gandur Museum

Courtesy Perrotin.