"RETURN FROM ICELAND" EXHIBITION

July 20 - October 16, 2021

Albert Camus media library 19 Boulevard Gustave Chancel, 06000 Antibes

+33 4 92 19 75 80 - Open Tuesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. - Closed Sunday and Monday

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“To travel is to discover sensations, smells, to nourish my creation…” . Bernard Alligand

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Bernard Alligand strives to fix the memory of the countries he crosses and the soils he treads. Each landscape is transformed into a vast display which it comes to stock up on. He takes meticulously and with discernment, both on the surface and in depth, a little of this earth and the multiple materials that compose it, to reintegrate it into his works, making it come back to life and exist in another dimension, that of the canvas or paper. Shedding light on the material, in its slightest crevices and detours, sublimating it in a way, such is the path that the artist has traced for thirty years.

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His work, of an astonishing unity, has never ceased to evolve and renew itself, to deepen itself. Neither figurative nor abstract, transcending the boundaries of creation, Bernard Alligand is in search of his own expression with the fierce desire to find a balance between forms and textures. Employing mixed techniques very early on in his compositions, he draws his inspiration from the places he crosses or rather that he excavates with patience and tenacity, like an archaeologist. His "harvests", as he calls them, of minerals and plants, nourish his works, and through a strange alchemy, are reborn on the canvas in a new space, where the material is in a way transcended by the hand of the artist. .

 

A land of volcanoes and glaciers, Iceland is a land of contrasts where the elements collide and reveal their dazzling light. Bernard Alligand uses the medium to paint his works with sands, sulfuric mud, ash from volcanoes,… materials that he collects, dries, crushes, sieves, transports to France… Then in his workshop, he carefully preserves these pigments to choose all the nuances during his creative process.

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The “Return of Iceland” exhibition at the Albert Camus Media Library in Antibes presents 6 new large-format paintings as well as a new series of paintings on paper produced in 2020 and this year. About a hundred works, covering the last period of the work on Iceland (34 paintings, approx. 50 original papers, 9 aquagravures and approx. 10 artist's books) are presented to the public from July 20 to October 16, 2021.

In addition to this, you need to know more about it.

The title of the exhibition refers to the handwritten artist's book produced with the writer and poet Michel Butor “Retour d'Islande”. This bibliophile's work follows their trip in 2014 to the exhibition Michel Butor and his painter friends, of which Bernard Alligand was the curator of the exhibition at the National Library of Iceland in Reykjavik. Since then, this title has accompanied all of the artist's exhibitions on Iceland. In particular, the premiere which took place at the Akié Arichi gallery in Paris (2015), at the Marie Demange gallery in Brussels (2016), at the L'Estampe gallery in Strasbourg (2017) then at the Pavillon des Arts et du Patrimoine in Châtenay. -Malabry (2018).

 

The titles of each painting relate to nature without representing it. He names the hold she has on his sensitivity, always interweaving perception and sensation. This is the source of his lyricism in which nature is always omnipresent: Celestial mirror, Tectonics, The infinites, Celestial body, Infinite earth, Night sun, Sky of ash, Cloud of sands, Fertile earth, Sediments, Lava, Craters, Plain Sky, ...

In addition to this, you need to know more about it.

Bernard Alligand is a French painter and engraver, born in 1953 in Angers. He lives, works in France and travels abroad regularly Learn more

His work is present in institutional and private collections. He exhibits on all continents Learn more
Several conservation funds (heritage) of the work of Bernard Alligand have been set up since 1990:

A collection of his engraved work was created in 1990 at Dep. prints from the BNF in Paris.

A Fund bibliophile his work was created in 2009 in Angers library in which is preserved all the original editions (more than a hundred artists books) accompanied by essays, letters, models and descriptions in know more

A collection of his work engraved at the L. Nucéra media library in Nice was inaugurated in January 2019. It accommodates all the editions accompanied by sketches, plaques, essays Find out more

Two catalogs reasoned of the engraved work cover the period 1985-2018. Find out more

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