Exposition de printemps de Bastien Lemaitre à Salviac

Bastien Lemaitre By Isabelle Marrou : A protean and self-taught artist, Bastien Lemaitre offers at the Chai a set of paintings representing nature, more particularly the forest and the tree. It is a question of forms, volumes and lights. It is a question of time, of duration, of immersion. His pictorial practice is similar to hyperrealist painting, borrowing light from the impressionists, chiaroscuro from the American realist painters and magic realism from the surrealists. The subject is nature, in the course of his walks in the Lot and elsewhere. The line is skillfully precise, sprinkling his subjects with shades of color with a kind of innocence in the form. Through his painting, Bastien Lemaître travels from the real to the surreal. His silent and dispirited observation of the world that human beings obstinately mishandle, seems to want to "make memory". No matter the references, no matter the technique, canvas or paper, oil or acrylic, he extracts the light from his subject to better transcend it. His forests seem to be inhabited and it is the invisible that one guesses. The trees give off a strength and an energy supported by an intense blue sky worked a thousand times. A white trace on a slender branch rounds out the relief and disturbs the viewer's perspective. From elements of landscape seized on unexpected points of view, shifted, disturbing, the understanding of the viewer is confused. The purpose seems simple, the complexity comes from the light which lets appear an illusion of reality and enchants it. Nature becomes strange. Still it is necessary to find the good distance! Too far away, the light fades, too close the detail reveals the technique and the magic fades. For several years now, Bastien Lemaître has also been developing a creation close to in situ art, using local and natural materials. Within the framework of the project of cultural experimentation Faire art de tout bois, carried out with the Regional Natural Park of Causses du Quercy in 2019, he proposes to create with the inhabitants of the village of Belfort-du-Quercy, a "world tree" whose roots and branches in driftwood stretch and are transformed into manufactured object of the heritage. The effect is striking and evokes the uses that we make of nature, of wood, for good or bad. Bastien Lemaître accompanies his exhibition with an installation made of local wood that recalls the cycle of life. Isabelle Marrou Artistic director June Gardens Visible from Tuesday to Saturday from 2:30 pm to 6 pm and on Wednesday from 10 am to 1 pm and by appointment.