Standing in front of "Landscapes of the Unspoken", by Marc Baufrère, a sort of physical coercion compels you into the heart of the painting. Suddenly light-headed, you can't escape the unceasing commotion of forms, the shadowy forces, like being suspended in empty space.
His technique gives the work the quality of alchemy, as if each painting were an enchanted vehicle, a vehicle transporting you to and from all the diverse moods of the soul. Each work has a noticeable permeability, allowing the spectator to venture into worlds of indeterminate sensations.
Like Antonin Artaud or Henri Michaud before him, Marc Baufrère conducts the inexpressible and fleeting impressions of mental states. His visions become clear with the rhythm of the paint on the canvas, an explosive symbiosis of cerebral flux and painterly execution. Playing with tonalities that are alternatively white-hot, soothing or icy-cold, the forms created produce a charge for the imagination. Once a painting is finished, Baufrère gives it a title that comes spontaneously from the sensations of that particular act of painting:
"I work with an urgency that I've never been able to get away from: the urgency of absolute silence where there is only room for mind; matter annihilating matter."
He works in his own time, partly aligned with notions of the Surrealists, partly beyond them, in a world of his own making. Distancing himself as much as possible to let the properties of the paint, canvas and the moment assert themselves, he becomes an explorer-a discoverer of the very worlds he creates.
Considering the ethereal paintings of Baufrère, one must admit speaking of unidentified subjects the way one would of unidentified flying objects.
His compositions challenge our perception with their vocabulary of primal forms culled from the depths of our collective imagination.
Selected Exhibitions
2009
Integration-Chinese and French Abstract Art Exhibition, Soemo Fine Arts, Beijing, China
Salon Paneuropeen, Paris, France
2008
Brigadoon Romain ville, Paris, France
Galerie "Art Fort Reveur" (Bruxelles) ( Belgium)
New Sun Shine Museum, Beijing, China
2007
Salon des réalités nouvelles, Paris, France
Imagine Gallery, Beijing, China
Galerie Alain Blondel, Paris, China
Since 2005
Permanent painter at the Galerie Alain Blondel, Paris, France
2004
Brigadoon Romainville, Paris, France
From 2003 on
The necessity to devote himself completely to painting, seems an evidence. All of his existence, his consciousness, his knowledge converge into it.
" I don't work like Van Eyk, Van Gogh, Matisse ou Duchamps, I neither want to inscribe nor to subtract, the extraction happens by itself. I work in a constant urgency. I never could get rid of it. The urgency of absolute silence where there is only room for the mind, matter destroy matter. He is not me who is painting, but through me that "it" paints."
1998
Salon des Artistes de l'Est Parisien 1er Prix, Paris, France
Salon de Fontenay sous bois
1997
Salon des Artistes de l'Est Parisien 1er Prix, Paris, France
1992
Galerie de l'escalier, Paris, France
Salon de Romainville, Paris, France
1991
K.O.H. , Paris, France
Salon de Romainville, Paris, France
Europe 2000 au Grand Palais, Paris, France
1990
Galerie Mezzanine ( Nanterre ) ( Paris )
Centre Pablo Neruda ( Corbeil ) ( Paris )
Chez M. Weymans, Agent d'art, Paris, France
Salon de Romainville, Paris, France