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until 28.07. | #2048ARTatBerlin | Galerie Born Berlin shows from 8th June 2018 the exhibition “Die Kleinen” by the artist Grégoire Hespel.
The studio of Grégoire Hespel
From the color frosted glass. High moorland landscapes behind the fogged windows of a pub. Or through the tears of the painter.
In Kidknapped, Stevenson describes the familiar yet sinister landscapes of Scotland that David Balfour is mistaken about: The young man wakes up at dawn after a night in the bog, it rains, his face is scratched by the heather.
Grégoire Hespel, having returned from the same journey, has barely noticed the downpour on canvas at home. “Painting a dewy,” he calls it.
In this strange, fascinating painting light and weather overlay each other like tracing paper. Showers, gusts, clouds, atmospheric layers are mixed with earthy surfaces that are soaked in rain and yet permeable to air: light dripping like a delicate touch, a final movement towards the canvas, which one unfortunately has to leave again.
It seems that the painter mixes his colors from the loamy soil of a painting landscape. The bristles of the brush keep following their own bushy trail until they turn to grass, to scrub, to color. Dark water of a hole, silvery strings of waterfalls springing between the rocks. Small white houses, stranded ships, no human soul far and wide. Where are the people? Here, in front of us, is one: he looks, he paints and searches on the canvas the way back to the moor.
In the studio of Grégoire Hespel, an old shop, the floor is a color palette, a piece of Scottish earth, covered with tubes and pastes; from the old Marantz amplifier drizzles the blues of Rodolphe Burger, the friend and musician, who beats the beat with his dusty Western boots.
This painting is not ashamed of its tenderness, of the childhood it inspires and in which it still drifts. An idiosyncratic way of insisting on figures, yet putting them in distress: showing and telling, but never everything. Hints at fairy tales in the exuberance of matter. Fragments of hero legends on which the painter’s hand is based.
Go, stay calm, time and again paint the frieze with human steps, which will last.
Everyone must follow their own path through the paintings that Grégoire Hespel wakes up by turning them around. One of them leans on a very nice, black bicycle. “A collector’s item, 3/10 wall thickness.” The steel looks so fine: like cigarette paper …
In a corner of the studio a small portrait, the surface cracked, “in the style of”. Delacroix. “The boss!” Commented the painter. We raise the glasses, to his welfare.
Didier Goldschmidt
Grégoire Hespel
Vernissage: Thursday, 7th June, 6 – 9 pm
Exhibition period: Friday, 8th June to Saturday, 28th July 2018
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Exhibition Grégoire Hespel – Die Kleinen – Galerie Born Berlin – Contemporary Art – Galleries Berlin – Kunst in Berlin – ART at Berlin
More exhibitions of Galerie Born Berlin:
GALERIE BORN DARSS: STRAWALDE – Goldstaub
13. Mai – 4. Juli 2018
Südstraße 22, 18375 Born / Darss, +49 172 88 55 692, Di – Sa 11 – 17 Uhr
PROJEKTRAUM HEIDDORF / GALERIE BORN: SIGRID ROTHE – Photography
6. Mai – 22. Juli 2018
Ernst-Thälmann-Straße 6, 19294 Neu Kaliß, +49 38 758 / 200 63, +49 172 88 55 692, Do – So 13 – 18 Uhr
