Bernard GARO

"With Ardent Fusions, the title of this series of paintings centered on Iceland. More geological, they represent a fusion of rocks, lava that reaches to the skies and the ice which encases the volcanoes as a constant paradox. This sublime oxymoron is magnified by contrasting colors and the monumentality to which the artist has already accustomed us. Living, the materials seem to come apart before our eyes, the earth opens up with gaping craters that the artist often presents, as if plunging into them, seeking to draw us into a fascinating vertigo. The spectator is seized with an irrepressible desire to melt into this generous mixture, to drown in these infinitely varying blues and browns, to dive into these incandescent rocks from which a bitter sulfurous scent seems to emanate. The fascination with volcanoes, subordinate to the inherited fear these ancient monsters had long since inculcated in our ancestors, links us to our cultural roots, to a profound respect for natural forces that are impossible to control. Mysterious mountains harboring primordial magma, volcanoes appear in Garo’s paintings as silent guardians of a passageway between the world of the living and its subterranean entrails."   Nicole Kunz