“With nearly 300 works painted, drawn, sculpted or installations, I draw, I recompose a world where the issue of the future of humanity is paramount”
Online Gallery
“For Avella Bagur, the quality of art to transcend time, to be inscribed for eternity in
human history, is also what makes it sustainable”
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About Christophe's Work
The seventeenth solo exhibition of Christophe Avella Bagur at Galerie Richard entitled «Les Pleureuses» from October 24 to December 2, 2020 consists of sixteen works in Indian ink on paper made during the coronavirus epidemic in 2020.
On a recent video the artist presents his new work:
“The Mourners series, which is part of the FS Face Series, Floating Souls, is a series on Chinese ink paper only, of large sizes ranging from two meters by three meters to fifty by sixty-five centimeters, where women, these weeping women will not only cry, most of them do not cry;
it will be the paint that will cry, the paint that will gush out by the water, by brushstrokes, with a saving of means. I chose the Chinese ink because it’s black and white worked in washes with a kind, not stratifications like in oil paint, but transparencies...”
Because Christophe Avella Bagur was from the beginning part of the line of the great painters who mark their time, he continues the revival of a figurative painting by treating almost exclusively a subject: the human being.
Here he abandons the problem of transplanting human souls into standardized bodies and returns to very real, isolated people with their irreducible singularity
The oxymorical opposition between the fragility suggested by the softness of the transparencies of fluid and light-matter of the Indian ink in the wash, and the strength rendered by the powerful contrast in the absolute black of the Indian ink and the white of the paper, accurately express the complexity of human nature.
Selected Recent Solo Exhibitions
35 x 35
Copelouzos Familly Art Museum
Athens, Greece
30 ans
Galerie Richard
Paris, France
Portraits/Autoportraits/Autre portraits/à l’ère 4.0
Galerie du Comble
Virton, Belgium
Ouverture
Altro Mondo Creative Space
Manilla, Philippines
Real Truth, Part 2
Xun Art gallery
Beijing, China
FLUX Art Fair
Flux Fair Harlem
New York City, US
Studio Visit
My work is about diagnosis. The series of works started in 2004-05, calling itself Faced FS (for Floating Souls), lays the foundations for a world of singular human faces the global world. With nearly 300 works painted, drawn, sculpted or installations, I draw, I recompose a world where the issue of the future of humanity is paramount. Whether social, political, economic, scientific, but also through historical analyzes (to understand the brutality of today's world, as in the set of works: Farglivert, Koncentration Lager), the "Face FS series "impose a radical look at the present. From a purely technical point of view (my will by enrolling in a human process: with hands), this painting reveals its most sensitive, stronger and also timeless in that it is part of a History of men and art History. it is voluntary on my part to continue a human process, not industrial, to speak about the human condition, at a time when we can all ask ourselves what is the purpose of our Western and world civilization.
For years, precisely since 2014, I intend to create an overall painting, to establish semantic, historic, aesthetic bridges between the past, present, and future. These works do care about most in my opinion: their power, their empathy, their humanity, their singularity outsized.
The new works of the past four years still belong to the set of "Face FS", however, I decline more thematic and pictorial working spaces. There are for example the two sub-series: "Face FS New Apostles", "Face FS Golgoth'Art" and « Face FS Madonna series – Les pleureuses ».
"Face FS New Apostles" is a collection of portraits of men and women of mature age, painted in a psychological state of nudity. I could say, having lived!
"Face FS Golgoth'Art" is as I like to do my titles of works: a play and an irony painted between Golgotha’s Christ and the path of the artist today, in a world of distractions endless, financial markets, globalized terrorist crimes, new cultural paradigms.
« Face FS Madonna series – Les pleureuses » is a set of 52 works (three sizes) on paper with black chinese ink, who shows the contemporary women through their daily life. They are confronted with their duties, their works, their thinkings and wishes of emancipation. The technic used for the series responds at two strong choices : an ecologic choice to not work with solvents and chimical colored pigments, to have the less ecologic impact possible, and to create with intuition and sensitivity….
ABOUT CHRISTOPHE AVELLA-BAGUR
Christophe Avella-Bagur was born in Avignon in 1968. He obtained a DEA in Plastic Arts at the University Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris in 1992. He has exhibited at Galerie Richard since 1992. He regularly exhibits in Paris, New York, Belgium, China
His works are in the collections of the Museum of New Art, Detroit, Michigan, USA, the National Museum of Shi Jia Zhuan, China, the Borusan Art and Culture Center, Istanbul, Turkey, the Colas Foundation, Boulogne-Billancourt, the Collection of the Villa Tamaris Art Center, La Seyne-sur-Mer, the Town Hall of Grande-Synthe, Grande-Synthe…
“Christophe Avella Bagur has a habit of working late into the night. Surrounded by darkness and a peaceful silence pausing the clamor of his contemporaries’ lives, he creates his art. Being an artist is his professional occupation, but for the 52-year old, it is not just a means of financial security. It is a necessity, an imperative, a fire that burns and allows him to release his energy. When asked if he was born an artist or became one, Avella Bagur replies: “I was born a creator and I have become an artist.”
It is the answer of a man humble enough to recognise the discipline and hard work behind an artist’s success but confident enough to be aware of his innate talent. The Spanish-Italian-French born in notorious 1968 has always had a connection with art. Growing up with parents who encouraged him to follow his dreams, he lived his childhood in touch with nature, spending his time inventing, drawing and constructing. As a young boy, he loved the sky and always felt a desire to understand the depths of the universe. Perhaps this is why he was torn between two callings: artist and astronomer.”