PARIS.- The Centre Pompidou invited Bernard Frize to take over the Gallery 3 space for a major exhibition of his works, more than 15 years after his last exhibition in France at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. A major French painter on the international artistic scene, Bernard Frize (born in 1954) has collaborated closely in the creation of this original exhibition. With some sixty artworks presenting the multiple facets of his work, from his beginnings in 1977 up until his most recent creations, the Bernard Frize. Without remorse exhibition proposes a themed itinerary to be taken as the visitor wishes, without directions or hierarchy, breaking with the serial approach for which the artist is known.

For more than 40 years, Bernard Frize, who currently divides his time between Paris and Berlin, has been constantly questioning pictorial practices and the role of the painter. At a time marked by virtuality and moving images, he is committed to examining the challenges of painting in a way few of his contemporaries do. According to the artist, his paintings are not the expression of a “creative ego,” but follow a formal policy that he imposes on himself: “there is no place for sensations or feelings here.” Bernard Frize advocates a technical, banal, sometimes preposterous, and oftentimes absurd, process in opposition to the demiurgic gesture that he condemns.

The Bernard Frize. Without remorse exhibition invites the visitor to witness the very act of creation, by revealing the strategies and intellectual challenges that underlie the painter’s works. Six themes structure an itinerary that is voluntarily paradoxical: With unreason, without effort, with system, without system, with mastery, without stopping.

While he is mainly known for his serial abstract and conceptual paintings, Bernard Frize has also incorporated figurative elements in his works since the 1980s. Consequently, in order to highlight the multiple pictorial investigations behind each work, paintings that are part of the same series are being exhibited in different sections, each accompanied by a commentary from the artist. Other little-known aspects of the artist’s artwork are also being presented, such as his photography work, for example.


1. The French title "Sans repentir" is based on the double meaning of the word repentir in French referring to the act of penance, regret, or remorse, but it is also an art term meaning "to rework" or "retouch".