Jean-Marc Bustamante

Jean-Marc Bustamante's work (born 1952, lives and works in Paris) is marked by an enigmatic, minimalist formalism. This may seem to keep the viewer at a distance, but in the resulting tension, which amounts to a reversal of seduction, the works assert their cool presence. Bustamante's ambivalent aesthetic stems from his desire to create a link between figuration and abstraction, the geometrical and the organic, industrial perfection and manual insufficiency.
The edition Lumière shown here is a fragment of Bustamante's large-size work of the same title shown in the "Pavilion of Amazones" in Venice. Derived from the internet and seemingly appearing out of the blue, this spectral image refers the viewer to a diffuse perception of the real, existing somewhere between photography and painting -- an ambiguous appearance projected against the wall.