Within the frame of his project ARIL (Alexandria, Reykjavik, Istanbul, Lisbon), initiated in 2004, the artist pursues his periplus to the borders of Europe, exploring the cardinal cities of the continent with, at the centre Switzerland as reference point. The adventure, geographic as well as cultural, underlying the artist’s work is a temptation for him – totally invested in contemporary art – to resurge the memory of a prestigious, imperial, royal or severe past, according to the civilizations represented by the selected capitals. It is also for Garo a way to take the measure and conscience of the vast cultural inheritance we received and to impregnate with the archaeological, historical, geologic or other traces conveyed.
Lisbon, a city of seven hills like Rome, and third destination of the project ARIL, has seduced the invaded the artist’s imaginary : the diversity and the precisions of the decorations, the narrow streets of the old town where the melancholic sounds of fados can be heard… It is also a panel of azulejos (an art imported by the Moors) seen at the turning of a road, playing the blues on a white ground, sparkling in the light of torrid middays; the calcadas, characteristic Portuguese pavements with black and white motives at the memory of the Ocean and its conquests; Moorish aspect passages, decorated with windows in “manuelin” style. These richness border contemporary realizations, namely the Oriente, Lisbon’s station, with games of lights, architectural lines evoking palm-groves with earth and sky tonalities, in rupture with the calm of the ancient quarters.
The art of Bernard Garo has this magic to transform, transpose these multiple elements, experienced, resented, visualized, full of emotions, in a vivid pictorial reality, transporting the spectator into unsuspected spaces, plunging him instantaneously into the strong reality of his plastic, mineral, geologic expression. With his sharp eye, he is interrogating, searching thoroughly into the ground and the inside of things and earth. Inhabited by all these elements, the artist translates them with the ardour that characterizes him, in a new fascinating work to be discovered ! A visit to the atelier permits also to complete this new vision, totally original.
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Bernard Garo lives and works between Nyon and Paris. Prize-winner of many contests, namely the artistic price of the city of Nyon (1994). He realized over a hundred exhibitions in Europe and Switzerland since 1989, as well as interdisciplinary performances with the “Collectif de la Dernière Tangente”, for ten years.
The works have been executed with the help of assistants Alessia, Gregory, Maulde and Nina.
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