Brice Guilbert: Ti brulé
Pace Gallery | Hong Kong
Pace Gallery presents Brice Guilbert: Ti brulé, an exhibition of new paintings by artist and musician Brice Guilbert, at its Hong Kong gallery from November 3 to December 7. Named for a song on Guilbert’s latest album Sin Jo, the exhibition will include seven large-scale paintings and one small-scale composition. An opening reception for the exhibition—during which the artist will give a live guitar performance of songs from Sin Jo—will be held at the gallery on November 2 from 6 to 8 p.m.
The exhibition’s title, Ti brulé, translates to “little burnt” from Réunion Creole, referencing the volcanic site of Le Grand Brûlé at the foot of the active Piton de la Fournaise volcano on Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean. Guilbert’s upcoming presentation in Hong Kong will begin with the seven large-scale works and conclude with a small-scale painting that evokes the show’s title.
All works in the show are titled Fournez, named for the local pronunciation of the Piton de la Fournaise volcano on Réunion Island, where the artist was raised from age two to 14. For these works, which are part of a series the artist has been producing for the last seven years, Guilbert uses variously colored oil sticks on wood to create layered, gestural marks, imbuing each semi-abstract rendering of the volcano with different moods and resonances.
Guilbert’s practice spans painting, drawing, and music, and the works in his forthcoming exhibition with Pace in Hong Kong speak to his interest in recurring visual motifs that produce rhythmic, melodic effects. The artist’s practice is often engaged with his personal and lived experiences, with his Creole roots and childhood on Réunion Island among the inspirations for his paintings and musical compositions, which incorporate vocals and guitar. At the center of much of Guilbert’s work in abstraction is an ineffable, nostalgic quality that defies any fixed narrative.
“The volcano is part of an unconscious, a space I lived and grew up in,” Guilbert has said of his Fournez paintings, which figured in the 2021 group exhibition Silence at Pace’s gallery in Geneva and the artist’s 2022 solo exhibition Fournez at Pace’s gallery in Palo Alto. “The subject represented is an eruption, a projection, a sensation projected to the surface of every painting. Every work of art is the projection of an affect and of an idea.”
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