Bernard Pagès: The Open Ridge 1984 Collection MAMAC Exhibition Presented from January 22 to May 22, 2011
Opening on Friday, January 21, 2011, at 6:30 PM Galerie des Ponchettes – Quai des Etats-Unis, Nice
This monumental work by Bernard Pagès was acquired by the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of the City of Nice in 1989. It is composed of round iron and oxidized or painted barrels, raw or planed wood, and ridge ceramics.
Since the 1970s, Bernard Pagès has been disrupting the traditions of sculpture. He chooses raw materials drawn from our natural or industrial environment, which he cuts, transforms, piles, and assembles using the most artisanal as well as the most technological means.
Bernard Pagès Born on September 21, 1940, in Cahors.
At 20, he enrolled at the Sacred Art Workshop in Paris. Visiting Brancusi’s studio, reconstructed and presented at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, played a decisive role in his abandoning painting in favor of sculpture.
Settled in the hinterland of Nice since 1965, he created his first sculptures the following year: using sandstone, clay, plaster, wood, worked directly on the ground with rudimentary tools. The discovery of the New Realists gives him greater creative freedom from 1967.
The fifth Festival of Visual Arts of the Côte d’Azur in Antibes marks his first participation in a group exhibition.
He then worked intensively towards abandoning the base, moving towards a freer sculpture, more radicalized, and rigorous Arrangements.
Thanks to the art critic Jacques Lepage and the painter Claude Viallat, he participated in many group exhibitions (notably the summer 1969 exhibition in Coaraze) that constantly challenge him.
In 1969, he demonstrated one of the variations of the Bricks/Logs relationship in Nice and Bordeaux. He presented them the following year in Brescia (Italy), as well as important combinations of tiles and gravel. During the summer, he then realized many exhibitions in nature.
Meanwhile, he refused to participate in the Support/Surface exhibition in Paris, which was historically intended to establish this group.
From 1971 to 1974, he worked solo on his work while sporadically holding jobs. He no longer traveled to Paris and did not participate in any exhibitions. However, he received visits from artist friends. It was a time rich in exchanges.
He then began series of Stakes, cataloging piles of gravel, classifying the states of an Annealed Wire (1972), developing the first Assemblies, and illustrating their classification by their prints.
His participation in the 1974 exhibition The New Painting in France at the Museum of Art and Industry of Saint-Etienne concluded this period of seclusion. This exhibition circulated in Europe. He exhibited with Catherine Issert in Saint-Paul, at the opening of her gallery.
He presented the following year in Paris, at the Eric Fabre gallery, his first solo exhibition, made up of series of Assemblies. He also participated in the 9th Paris Biennale.
In 1976, he created his first wall works at the ADDA in Marseille and returned to the Museum of Art and Industry of Saint-Etienne with Toni Grand. He started building his outdoor studio.
In 1978, he was invited to make direct interventions on nature in three different locations: at the American Center in Paris he created a bed of 1200 bricks; in Auzole in the Lot, a large quarter circle of scorched grass; and in the forest of Neuenkirchen, a large colorful path.
Through the mediation of these “three geometric prints in the landscape,” he shifted towards a more marked rigor. By the end of the summer, he began his first Ridges.
In 1980, he exhibited at the Lebon gallery in Paris, in 1981 at the Contemporary Art Gallery of the Museums of Nice, in 1982 at the Robert Elkon Gallery in New York, in Tours, Toulon, Meymac, as well as in New Delhi, Buffalo, San Francisco, Seattle, Ghent, Bergen, and Brisbane in Australia. The same year, The Pompidou Center in Paris dedicated a major exhibition to him, which circulated until 1984.
He then reinforced his equipment to work on larger dimensions. Besides new stone and masonry columns, he created metal pieces: using cans and introducing iron bushes.
From 1985, he created monumental works, including the Tribute to Gaston Bachelard, a column installed in Mailly-Champagne, the Olof Palme Fountain in La Roche-Sur-Yon, the Tribute to Albert Camus, set up in Nîmes, and the Column at the Parisian Cultural Affairs headquarters.
In 1986, he echoed the landscapes of 1978 by organizing a pathway of barrels (222 Flowers) in a semicircle on the hillside dominated by Edinburgh Castle.
He exhibited a year later at the Museum of Modern Art of Céret, created the Ridge-chimney of Ivry in 1988, and presented a selection of recent works at the Midi-Pyrenees Contemporary Art Center (1989). The Lelong Gallery, where he first exhibited in 1987, dedicated a solo exhibition to him during the 1989 FIAC.
He participated the following year in the exhibition The Bel Age, Supports/Surfaces at the Chateau de Chambord. A significant solo traveling exhibition inaugurated in Zagreb (Croatia) before being shown in 1991 in Brussels and then Saarbrücken (Germany). Occasionally, he continued to contribute to magazines or limited edition publications.
From 1992, he worked on private commissions, like The Perfumed Fountain of the Fragonard Factory in Eze, accompanied by solo exhibitions in museums (the Denys-Puech Museum in Rodez, the cloister of Saint-Trophime in Arles, the Herzliya Museum of Art, Israel, etc.).
After the installation of The Stone on the Spur at the School of Mines in Alès, he exhibited in 1994 in Paris a series of Overflows and new works at the Chateau d’Arsac in Bordeaux. He participated in the 1% development of the courthouse (Palace Rusca) in Nice by masking nine “shields” over the vault projectors.
In 1995, the retrospective exhibition at the Henri-Martin Museum in Cahors and the exhibition of recent works at the Matisse Museum of Nice provided an opportunity to publish a catalog raisonné of his work since 1989.
The deposit of the Column 85 by Jacques Vistel at the Brou museum inspired an exhibition spread across the chapter rooms and cloisters of the monastery in the spring of 1996.
During the summer of 1996, he presented recent sculptures at the Jacques Girard gallery in Toulouse and in Valréas (Enclave des Papes), monumental works in the Simiane castle and town. The end of the same year was marked by the setup of the Deflects with Twist, commissioned by the rectorate of Aix-Marseille, on the forecourt of the University of Sciences and Law in Montperrin, Aix-en-Provence. From December 1996 to the end of February 1997, an exhibition was organized at Carré Saint-Vincent in Orleans.
A set of sculptures entitled The Acrobats was exhibited during the summer of 1997 at the Vassivière Contemporary Art Center in Limousin. The Overflows with Golden Fruits were installed at Guillaume Vento College in Menton in November 1997, and the Viewpoint in the Vassivière sculpture park in early 1998.
During summer 1998, around twenty sculptures were exhibited in Saint-Pierre Church as part of the Avallon sculpture biennial.
In 1999, Surgeons and Acrobats were shown at the Lelong Gallery in Paris, accompanied by a text from Denis Roche. In spring, three monumental sculptures were erected in Dolceacqua, Italy. In Fall, he participated in The Fields of Sculpture exhibition on the Champs-Elysées, with The Dejected (now installed at Chateau d’Arsac, Margaux).
In June 2000, two exhibitions were organized in Champagne-Ardennes by the Regional Office for Culture.
Three projects marked 2001: The Footbridge on the Paillon de Contes (Alpes Maritimes) in collaboration with architect Marc Barani, The Arch Shaped Deflect in Valréas, and a set of five sculptures installed on the forecourt of the Epinal courthouse.
An exhibition of works from 1966 to 2002 at the Chateau de Villeneuve/Emile-Hugues Foundation in Vence marked 2002.
On the occasion of the book release: Works from 1992 to 2002, accompanied by a text by Maryline Desbiolles: We Dream Our Life (Editions du Cercle d’art, “Peregrines” collection), a series of exhibitions was organized. It began at the Caisse d’Epargne de Midi-Pyrénées in Toulouse (January-March 2003), continued at Maison des Arts in Malakoff (May-July 2003), Chapelle des Ursulines in Quimperlé (June-September 2003), the Former Palace of the Bishopric in Beauvais (January-March 2004), and ended at the museum of the City of Soissons – Arsenal Abbey Saint-Jean-des-Vignes (April-June 2004). During the summer, he participated in numerous group exhibitions, including one with Claude Viallat.
A set of nine new sculptures (The Thieves) was shown in the summer of 2004, during a group exhibition in the gardens of the Residence of France in La Marsa, Tunisia.
At the end of 2004, the Regional Library of Marseille was inaugurated; Bernard Pagès created a path of steel on the marble floor.
In 2005, sixteen panels of vivid and colorful sheet metal punctuated the walkways at the heart of Vence high school. A Stagger was placed in front of the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences in Limoges.
In 2005 and 2006, he was occupied with creating new sculptures specifically for the exhibition at MAMAC in Nice. In 2007, he participated with the Lelong Gallery in Art-Paris at the Grand Palais and created a monumental sculpture titled Headwind on the landscaped roundabout of the “Baraques” on Department Road 6202 in Nice.
On the occasion of FIAC 2010, he presented a sculpture in the Jardin des Tuileries.
