Gérard Garouste - La Bourgogne, la famille et l'eau tiède

« This is a very figurative serie whose subject is rather unwieldy, as the title of this exhibition, with its plain juxtaposition of three words. Burgundy is the paradise lsot of my childhood, the family its hell. Lukewarm wtaer is the mixture or resultant of the two, and suggests a derisisve self-portrait : the man right in the middle. There is a certain irony in eulogizing tepidness as the ideal temperature, a symbol of temperance. The reference to madness in many of my paintings seems to be  a way of distancing myself from myslef. It lets me make fun of myslef and play around with excesses. Delirium always comes wrapped in certitude, order and perfection. My doubts are written there in negative. I have never made use of my own story befire. Here I will recount a few episodes in the most simple, anecdotal, straightforward way. I hope womething comes of this contrast. I often say  that the perception of the ensemble of paintings in an exhibition – the moment when the visitor comes into contact with the artwork- is very important to me. The painter needs to touch the eye, the mind and the heart of the viewers ; at the heart of evry artwork is a wager on a successful transformation. When that happens, the imageresonates and generates unexpected relationships, which may be mysterious or poetic but any rate are independant of the subject in hand, in this case the bare facts of my biography, of which only a few traces are left. The contact point with the viewer would seem weak if painting were not a link that by conferring a not-in-the-now status on the canvas, carries it straight to the universal. » 
Gérard Garouste interviewed by Hortense Lyon

Born in 1946 in Paris, Gérard Garouste lives and works in Paris and Normandy. He is one of the leading figures in French art. As both painter and sculptor, he is obsessed by the origins of our culture, myths and the legacy left us by the old masters. His own life is the springboard for his work on ‘dismantling images and words’ and his fascination with the questions of origins, time and transmission. His paintings are born of associations of ideas. Now unsettling, now joyful, they teem with animals, some of them fantastical, and a cast of different characters. His sources range from the Bible to popular culture and literary greats, from Cervantes to Rabelais.