Bruno Gadenne “Eulogy for a Hornbill”

agnès b. galerie boutique

This event has ended.

agnès b. presents Eulogy for a Hornbill by French artist Bruno Gadenne at the agnès b. Galerie Boutique at 50 Howard Street in SoHo, New York. Comprised of 16 new paintings inspired by his travels in Malaysia and Indonesia, this will be his first exhibition in the US for the Paris-based artist.

Eulogy for a hornbill.

One needs to cross the jungle, climbs on platforms suspended from the trees and trust one’s lucky star to observe the hornbills. If they are not visible at first glance, hornbills do inhabit Bruno Gadenne’s paintings. Somewhere, lurking in the pink mist or behind a tree trunk, they survive human activity as they can.

With this new series of paintings, the young French painter takes us to the discovery of a “narrative landscape” which takes root in Malaysia and Indonesia more than in a fantasized nature. From his travels across Asia, Bruno Gadenne retains strange shapes and colors; but beyond the image, he allows the viewer to face the sensations.

Nature’s emptiness and wholeness intoxicates us and make us suffocate. Like standing at the edge of an unknown forest, we are simultaneously attracted by the desire to discover and frightened by a dominating nature.

What lies behind the waterfall or the dense foliage on the riverbanks is certainly what Henry David Thoreau or John Muir described more than a century ago. Like those naturalist writers, each artwork proclaims that wild and remote lands deserve a strong aesthetic commitment in order to be better acknowledged and preserved. To better give the landscapes their surreal colors and their uncanny aspect, Gadenne renewed his palette and let the light rays float.

Long after we have admired those crimson nights, we are still looking for a hornbill’s presence.

“Like so many other tropical species, these hornbills are in danger, due to poaching and massive deforestation. That’s why I did not represent a single animal in the paintings presented here. Perhaps some still hide in the mist, between layers of oil paint. This exhibition is a way to honor them.” - Bruno Gadenne, August 2019

Bruno Gadenne was born in 1990 in Cavaillon, France. After studying in Paris and Boston (SMFA), he graduated from the Haute École des Arts du Rhin in Strasbourg in 2014, under the mentorship of painter Daniel Schlier. His first solo show was in Strasbourg in 2014. Highlighted by the exhibitions of the International Painting Prize of Novembre à Vitry in 2016 and then the Prix Icart 2017, Bruno Gadenne is the 2018 laureate of the Prix Théophile Schuler.

Gadenne’s work relates to landscape and nature, inspired by his travels around the world, using photographs and sketches as basis for his artworks. Using oil paint, he creates a strangeness by diverting some of the landscape features. He tries to create a tension by playing with the rendering of light and the deepness of transparent layers, establishing a double play between wonder and an uncanny feeling. His ambitious intention is to capture the viewer’s attention, to invite the spectator to contemplate while being on the alert. A tranquility hiding an underlying menace.