Suffice it to say that when you walk through the Mer Marine museum in Bordeaux, you expect everything except to come across imposing paintings (sometimes six meters long), with a very assertive 80s neorealist aesthetic, and which, often, recall the abundant universe of Robert Combas. Paintings by Pascal Obispo, exhibited in the Gironde capital until January 7.
The starting point for this highlight, rather spectacular in its size (60 paintings on an entire floor), is to be found near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. It was, in fact, following his meeting with a specialist from the Saint-Paul de Mausole clinic, in Saint-Rémy, that Obispo threw himself headlong into creation, brushes in hand. The specialist in question is none other than the psychiatrist Jean-Marc Boulon, who offers his patients Art therapy workshops.
“Raw and postureless works”
Precisely, Pascal Obispo’s Bordeaux exhibition is titled “Art Therapy”. When the author of Lucie et More than anything in the world recounts this trigger, he is voluble to say the least: “I visited a workshop which was the result of a man’s desire to help people in a clinic, to help them move forward with their trauma through works.” And Pascal Obispo continues: “I understood why I needed to paint, what the meaning of my work was.”
Previously, the singer asked the psychiatrist to give him some blank canvases “in order to concretize what I had seen in this workshop. Today, these paintings speak a lot to people. It’s like in music: the songs of truth are the ones that speak the most because they are true, raw , without posture.”
The exhibition runs until January 7, 2025. A date which was not chosen at random since the next day, January 8, Pascal Obispo will be 60 years old.
“Art Therapy” exhibition until January 7 at the Musée Mer Marine in Bordeaux.
