Denis Castellas
December 11, 2019 - January 25, 2020
Denis Castellas
December 11, 2019 - January 25, 2020
Ceysson & Bénétière is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Denis Castellas. This exhibition will be on view from December 11, 2019 to January 18, 2020.
These paintings belong to an ensemble originating from a photograph showing P Cezanne in nature in painter's attire. The image, is one of a man walking and looking, and at the same time the picture of a land surveyor. In some paintings he is confronted to its imaginary colored shadows while in others (often unstretched canvases) the figure floats in an undetermined space.
This series echoes in a distant but precise way another series painted in 2012 and presented at the Ceysson Bénétière gallery in Geneva in 2013. These paintings started from the reproduction found in an auction catalog of the cover of an edition of “Lyrical Ballads” by the English poet W. Wordsworth (1770-1850).
“Ballad” evokes to the French speaker, both the song ("balade") and a stroll ("ballade").
Ballade et balade : in French a song can be a walk.
Here, painting is both a walk in the world and a song of the world in which the artist, obstinately follows, its unknown path like a minuscule agitated particle. The story tells that Cezanne worked until his last breath. Joseph Beuys liked to compare Blinky Palermo’s paintings to breaths. Breath is what links walking to singing and suspends Cezanne’s apples in a space that challenges gravity.
Denis Castellas (b. 1951, Marseille, France) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and Nice, France. Castellas’s work has been the subject of several solo presentations both stateside and abroad, notably at the Musée Marc Chagall in Nice, Parker’s Box Gallery in Brooklyn, and Ceysson & Bénétière, Paris. His work has also been included in several group exhibitions including at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Nice, the First Biennale of Lyon, the Palais de Beaux Arts Bruxelles, and FRAC Burgundy to name a few. Castellas’s work can be found in public collections such as the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain Geneva.
These paintings belong to an ensemble originating from a photograph showing P Cezanne in nature in painter's attire. The image, is one of a man walking and looking, and at the same time the picture of a land surveyor. In some paintings he is confronted to its imaginary colored shadows while in others (often unstretched canvases) the figure floats in an undetermined space.
This series echoes in a distant but precise way another series painted in 2012 and presented at the Ceysson Bénétière gallery in Geneva in 2013. These paintings started from the reproduction found in an auction catalog of the cover of an edition of “Lyrical Ballads” by the English poet W. Wordsworth (1770-1850).
“Ballad” evokes to the French speaker, both the song ("balade") and a stroll ("ballade").
Ballade et balade : in French a song can be a walk.
Here, painting is both a walk in the world and a song of the world in which the artist, obstinately follows, its unknown path like a minuscule agitated particle. The story tells that Cezanne worked until his last breath. Joseph Beuys liked to compare Blinky Palermo’s paintings to breaths. Breath is what links walking to singing and suspends Cezanne’s apples in a space that challenges gravity.
Denis Castellas (b. 1951, Marseille, France) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and Nice, France. Castellas’s work has been the subject of several solo presentations both stateside and abroad, notably at the Musée Marc Chagall in Nice, Parker’s Box Gallery in Brooklyn, and Ceysson & Bénétière, Paris. His work has also been included in several group exhibitions including at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Nice, the First Biennale of Lyon, the Palais de Beaux Arts Bruxelles, and FRAC Burgundy to name a few. Castellas’s work can be found in public collections such as the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain Geneva.
Zelda Suzu de Linaré, November 2019
Artist : Denis Castellas
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