In the 1970s and the 1980s, French artist Bernard Moninot drew and painted a series of greenhouses. Based on different modes of representation – axonometric projections, outside central perspective and interiors views – Moninot’s greenhouses become autonomous realms.
In his aet, Geometry meets poetry. We see the contrast between the greenhouse’s highly ordered transparent skins and the the plants within. These are tracings if light. It’s as if we are seeing the invisible as reality is given geometric shape, ideas are mathematised and we can touch the untouchable.
Bernard Moninot was Born in Le Fay, France, in 1949. He studied at the Beaux-Arts de Paris in the late 60s and began exhibiting in 1970 at the Biennale de Paris, CNAC, Galerie Lucien Durand and Galerie Karl Flinker. His first solo show took place in 1974 at the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain in Saint-Étienne. He then participated regularly in major group shows at the Dokumenta in Kassel, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Musée des Sables d’Olonne.
In 1979, Jean-Louis Prat organized another solo show at the Fondation Maeght. In the 80s, he continued his research, increasingly focused on the study of natural phenomena, with a desire to push back the boundaries of drawing. He carried out public commissions and taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Bourges, then in Angers.
In the 90s, he presented his work at Galerie Montenay in Paris and at Andata/Ritorno in Geneva. In 1997, a new solo show opened at the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris, directed by Daniel Abadie, and the following year at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dôle, as well as in Scottish and Finnish museums.
Starting in 1999, he began collecting “wind drawings” with an instrument of his own invention, an undertaking he has called La Mémoire du vent (Wind Memory), and which has seen him travel – and exhibit – in numerous countries for over twenty years.
– Galerie Catherine Putman.
‘The simplest definition of the word “art” means “to make.” But “to make” is to echo something very subtle, elusive, which is thought…’
– Bernard Moninot
Via: Socks Studio
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