The Imprimerie Rhode is one of the popular places for painters to present their paintings. Cédric and Stéphanie Franques open their picture rails to them in a setting and lighting that knows how to highlight them. Their experience guarantees a demanding selection of artists and their works: around twenty, no more. Michel Ger is a regular guest in the Imprimerie reception hall. Until February 3, we can see sixteen paintings, in different styles. The one we know and which has made its success, a semi-figurative work largely detached from forms where color is the architect of the subjects, a sort of “graffiti tachism” where tones rub shoulders, collude, overlap, where the subject emerges from a tiny crowd of small motifs. San Giorgio which stands out against a clear sky and seems to float on a black lagoon, the souks of Meknes and Fes where the painting conveys the cavernous atmosphere, the peeling walls and vaults, the maze of alleys-corridors in which a crowd makes his way. Ger borrows from the liquid universe which dilutes buildings and beings.
Two different styles
In the great landscapes of the Atlas, cinnabar red and crimson devour the hills: precarious life is reduced to small white spots, poor valley mechtas, lost in the immensity of the warm tones of the mountain. Winter in Venice: the city levitates above the mists of the lagoon, surrounded by the same pale green of the water and the sky. Illusion of an island or a jewel in its setting. Some will discover another Ger: the Old olive tree of Crete, Solitude, Evening, Snow on the slopes of Mauriac, the Quai Saint-Jacques… The touch is compulsive, almost reflex, the pencil or pastel sweeps the paper in sooty streaks , black is essential to outline shapes or set a dynamic in motion. The density or profusion of patterns and colors is replaced by white spaces and a minimalist palette. Behind the exhibition, an “emotion” pencil: the silhouette of Bernard Bistes in the sixties. Michel Ger pays a debt of gratitude to the one who first detected his talent.
