Bernard Gast

The artist

Born amidst the noise and fury of the Algerian War, Bernard Gast spends much of his childhood in La Rochelle.

The Humanities are at the heart of his intellectual and artistic journey, with, for example, a DEA in Philosophy ( Psychoanalysis & Aesthetics).

After ten years in institutional communication, he lets go of the relative security of wage labor to devote himself entirely to Art... but he still preserves time for the practice of Psychoanalysis and philosophical research (Aesthetics).

His creation essentially takes three forms:

This energy – both practical and theoretical – liberates a unique way of creating, a singular style... A discovery that Bernard Gast theorizes and condenses as follows: "I paint with the 35 mm film of Cinema". His "visuals" suggest all the historical ideas and forms of Painting in particular, and art in general (Abstract, Kineticism, New Figuration, Pop Art, Surrealism, Photojournalism, Poetic Realism, New Wave cinema, etc).

About twenty artists worldwide reflect and realize, directly or indirectly, a plastic work related to cinema: John Baldassari, Jeff Wall,...

Certainly, Bernard Gast's work expresses a great diversity in form, but its unity mainly emerges from the approach. With only "raw material" from film scraps, his artistic language constantly evokes Painting. The creation of this contemporary visual artist – while breaking free from its material – nevertheless refers to the Spirit of Painting.

This is likely what led Olivier Michelon * to say: Bernard Gast's work is more pictorial than a Painting!


* Olivier Michelon, former Curator at the Centre Georges Pompidou for The movement of images (art, Cinema) & Chief Curator from Vuitton Foundation

Awards

Media: web, television, radio...

Editions

Main exhibitions

Public & Private Collections

Public

Private

Bellina Léon – Jean-José Rieu  Philippe Delaunay – Amanda Lear (France)  Véronique Bernard (Laboratoires Bayer, Suisse)  Dr. Heike Troll (Solvias Basel, Suisse)  Dr. Norbert Müller (Suisse)  Hans-Jürgen Schmidt (Allemagne)  Atsuo Shimada (Japon)  Claude Seror (Israël) ...

Research

Others (Album covers, posters, book covers...)

Education

  • Law (University of Poitiers)
  • Art History (University of Bordeaux III)
  • Chinese Medicine, Humanities,... (IRFTE - Paris)
  • Visual Arts, Fine Arts (University of Paris VIII)
  • Philosophy (Paul Valéry University - Montpellier III)