BRYCE DELPLANQUE: MEETLIFE

OPENING ON NOVEMBER 16, 2024, AT 3:00 PM

EXHIBITION FROM NOVEMBER 16, 2024, TO JANUARY 18, 2025

For its inaugural exhibition, Prima is proud to present the work of Bryce Delplanque. In this newly renovated space, a body of work the artist has been developing since 2023 is shown almost in its entirety for the first time. MeetLife is rooted in a contemporary reinterpretation of the still life. It offers a compelling synthesis of the gallery’s philosophy: supporting and promoting a new generation of artists while bringing forth new forms, without losing sight of fundamental traditions.

“In the exhibition MeetLife, I explore the theme of the still life in painting by playing on the English term itself: ‘still life’ (literally, ‘immobile life’). In this series, I work in charcoal after still lifes by Henri Fantin-Latour (1836–1904), replacing one element of each composition with an object taken from prints by Kuniyoshi (1798–1861). These colored objects, inserted into black-and-white compositions, appear as unexpected visitors, disrupting perception and prompting us to reconsider what we are seeing.

This displacement acts as a revelatory device for a genre that is often underestimated. Still life is the art of material life, of the attention paid to the objects an artist chooses to represent. These objects, seemingly devoid of obvious aesthetic value, become sublime through the miracle of painting. As Gérard Wajcman¹ writes, the still life can be reduced to a simple equation: ‘a thing + a gaze.’ More than paintings of objects, still lifes are paintings of gazes. To me, this removes the notion of ‘nature’ from a genre that, paradoxically, is anything but still.

Driven by the same aesthetic desire, I am drawn to the images of objects found in Kuniyoshi’s prints, even though they are foreign to me. By selecting and integrating them into my compositions, I do not merely reproduce them: I observe them, transform them, and give them a new place within an unfamiliar context. These elements, external to my own culture, demand a particular gaze, one that seeks to tame this strange object by placing words upon it, as if to better grasp it. Thus, ‘the word would be the hand of thought.’²

Still life has often been considered a minor genre, perceived as merely decorative. But perhaps this link to domesticity does not lie solely in the triviality of its subjects, but also in painting itself, conceived as an interior decorative element. This is the aspect that particularly interests me and captures my attention as an artist. In this way, my paintings, through their material thickness, assert their existence as objects. The edges of the painting are no longer reserved solely for drips; they become a pictorial space in their own right, fully embraced.”

Bryce Delplanque

¹,² Gérard Wajcman, Ni Nature, ni morte, les vies de la nature morte, 2022, Éditions Nou