POL PIERART

As Julie Bawin explains in a text published in l’Art même in 2007: “If there is one artist whom no consideration of fashion seems to divert from the path he has determined to follow, it is Pol Pierart. Away, almost in secret, he develops a constant and coherent body of work which has the unpredictability of continuing to hold the eye, to shake up our habits of vision and to put an end, temporarily, to the triumph of demonstration. Throughout his exhibitions, we are always won over by the little discoveries of a man who, if he does not like public speaking, plays skilfully with words, the irony of shifts in meaning and the fantasy of innuendos (...).

The artist says that it allows him to go directly to the essential, that it authorises him to grasp the physical presence of the word. Thus, unlike his photographs which apostrophise the attention with meaningful modes of association and a staging of aphorisms and other language games, the canvases surprise by a great economy of means and by a rhythmic syntax limited to a single word. In fresh colour, the painter quickly traces letters that contain a seemingly innocuous term. Anyone who knows the artist even a little will know what happens next: through a play of crossing out, superimposed lines and doctored letters, the initially written word takes on another meaning and encourages all sorts of readings, excursions and detours. Like a comet, the letters zigzag through our thoughts. They move quickly, they hit the mark and are in keeping with the detached irony of the message delivered. Behind the apparent lightness of semantic interference, there is a seriousness that is barely acknowledged.”

Text courtesy Galerie Bernard Bouche.