artist/ MOREL

France

Bernard Morel, born in 1957, lives and works near Paris. His wall sculptures bring to mind mysterious and poetic landscapes, composed of fragments of used zinc, which he has been collecting for many years from scrap merchants.
In his studio, he meticulously and carefully cleans and flattens each piece. This preparation, a sort of sound ritual, leaves many pieces on the floor, like an enigmatic metal patchwork that then requires a certain amount of arrangement, an imperative for creation or interpretation; his work of association can then begin.
Bernard Morel plays with these disparate fragments of worn, porous, painted, burnished or oxidised material. He elaborates each composition by bringing together, confronting or superimposing. While a work of frank opposition makes volumes appear, a work of juxtaposition lets appear a more rhythmic space, towards different distances.
Slowness and patience are combined in silence in his studio. When suddenly a space, square or rectangular, appears “just right” to be isolated, it is then adjusted on a wooden board. Bernard Morel builds his wall sculpture which inevitably becomes a painting!
The visitor who discovers these works, approaches and moves back, letting the landscape come to him. In front of Bernard Morel’s paintings, everyone captures his own landscape by surprise, his own imaginary journey.