In his work, Jean-Baptiste Bernadet sets out to explore one of the thousands of variations that exist between the solid state of the painted canvas, with its dogged permanence of a definitive object, and the liquid state of our emotions: the continuous, distracted flux of our perceptions, the waking dream of memories that furtively surface in the constant swell of our consciousness. A distinctive colorist—also skilled at experimental ceramics and large-scale installations—within each canvas Bernadet creates an atmospheric space, in which nature, emotion, and psyche take center stage. They oscillate somewhere between abstraction and landscape painting: incandescent shades of orange, full and honest purples, sulfuric yellows, deep grays, and melancholic pale greens produce worlds in which a landscape, its unique memory, and the imagination interact, directed by the eye and the mind. Bernadet channels the spirit of Proust in his intimate relationship to memory, his deep desire to transcend linear time. If the ultimate aim of his painting is painting itself, it grants viewers an immense freedom, that of projecting their own experiences onto the canvas. 

Born in Paris in 1978, Jean-Baptiste Bernadet lives and works in Brussels, and was artist-in-residence at Triangle Studios, Brooklyn, in 2012, APT Studios, Brooklyn, in 2011, and the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas, in 2010. His solo exhibitions include, among others, Musées de la Citadelle de Villefranche (2022), Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen (2020), Almine Rech in Brussels, Paris, and London (since 2016), Marfa Book Company in Marfa, Texas (2019, 2015, 2013), Karma in New York City (2014), and the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas (2010). 

His works are included in the permanent collections of Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar; Cité de la Tapisserie, Aubusson; CNAP, Paris; Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Roveretto, Rovereto; MAC VAL, Ivry-sur-Seine; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; and Thalie Art Foundation, Brussels, among others.

Photo credit: Diego Mitrugno