Jean-Pierre Bertrand's Heterogeneous Practice at Galerie Michel Rein

Jean-Pierre Bertrand's exhibition at Galerie Michel Rein in Paris, running from November 29, 2008, to January 17, 2009, showcases nearly forty years of his heterogeneous and experimental practice. The show combines old and recent works, including paintings, a vitrine, photographs, and a film. The centerpiece is "Samout et Moutnefret," a film shot in the Egyptian department of the Louvre in 1993, newly edited with a reworked soundtrack. It features a stone statuette voiced by Bertrand himself, blending past and present in a harmonious juxtaposition of frozen matter and vital breath. The film's ghostly, noctilucent quality is echoed in "Anges ou une seconde à Buenos Aires," composed of twelve photogrammes from a 1972 film showing five men walking down a street. These fleeting images, like the Egyptian statuette, are rescued from oblivion and imbued with presence through multiplication. While recalling conceptual photography's seriality, the work's atmosphere complicates such affiliation. Paintings and vitrines continue Bertrand's alchemical experiments with materials like honey paper, salt paper, lemons, red acrylic, and Plexiglas, creating surprising effects of opacity and transparency. The result, especially in "Cinq Corps rouges," is highly convincing.