Jean-Baptiste Bernadet

Trained as a painter, Jean-Baptiste Bernadet initially worked at the fringes of abstraction before introducing, in 2004, his first words in painting with the disillusioned sentence “I have lost my illusions”. Drawing from the consciousness of loss, an extraordinary energy and creativity, this work inaugurates an extremely fertile series of paintings of words. A pivotal painting, I have lost my illusions announces the prominent characteristics of Jean-Baptist Bernadet’s recent work. From the start, the choice of the English language immediately raises doubts regarding the author’s sincerity. The meanings of Bernadet's ready-made sentences oscillate between dramatic confidences and B-movie dialogue. This ambiguity between the touching authenticity of a personal revelation on the one hand, and the contempt for the commonplaces of communication and self-construction at the dawn of the twenty-first century, pervades the whole series of word paintings. The French artist’s graphic style is more immediate and expressive, like the background on which words appear. Visible erasures, run-outs, garish colors, de-centered compositions or recycling of abandoned works which transparently appear under new creations, Bernadet’s painting expresses an extreme intensity, which I shall name, according to the artist’s own (painted) word of, “hhardor”.

Devrim Bayar