Exhibited at the Obadia Gallery since 2010, Guillaume Bresson is one of the leading figures of the hyperrealistic figurative painting movement that has become very fashionable. Now based in New York, the French artist (born in 1982 in Toulouse) returns with a virtuoso new series, more theatrical than ever.
Against indeterminate black backgrounds, stormy seas, or baroque skies, bodies emerge in freefall. Were they not clad in jeans or jogging pants, and were their swirling choreography not punctuated by sneakers, one might see them as the fallen souls of the Last Judgments in Christian painting. Unlike the artist's previous series set in contemporary locations (underground parking lots, gyms, and other deserted suburban spaces), this latest work is decontextualized: apart from the t-shirts that have replaced draperies, the bodies, seemingly isolated, appear to detach themselves from the timeless backgrounds only to plunge into immensity—of heaven or hell…
These swirling bodies and draperies, veritable dramas, play with chiaroscuro, theatricalizing the contortion of anatomies and the folds of half-removed garments. Painting from photographs, Guillaume Bresson delights in meticulously rendering the tension of muscles and the slightest creases of skin in the manner of the Old Masters. Another technical feat is the depiction of the falling bodies painted from a low angle—floating and swirling figures evoking the greatest masterpieces of the Renaissance or Classicism (one need only think of the fresco of the Last judgement from Michelangelo, to the angels and martyrs of Caravaggio or to Massacre of the Innocents by Nicolas Poussin), but also scenes from apocalyptic films such as The day after 1, 2012 2 ou The Impossible 3.
By cutting up his source images to recompose a world oscillating between reality and fiction, verism and dreamlike imagery, the painter, who multiplies references to classical painting (not hesitating here to use the round format of the tondo so prized in the Renaissance, there to cite such a nude study by Théodore Chassériau), is clearly not seeking to show off his virtuosity to shine: his paintings are heavy with meaning and, just as his forests and black waves evoked the drama of migrants, they undoubtedly bear witness to the loss of bearings in our time.
- The Day After Tomorrow : American disaster film directed by Roland Emmerich, released in 2004.
- 2012 : American disaster film co-written and directed by Roland Emmerich, released in 2009.
- The Impossible : Spanish disaster film directed by Juan Antonio Bayona, released in 2012.
