LA MARCHE DIVINE DES VOYAGEURS
We are pleased to present you the divine exhibition of the Travellers by the artist Bruno Catalano, on the square in front of the historic church of Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption, a Polish Catholic place of worship located on Place Maurice-Barrès, at the corner of Rue Saint-Honoré and Rue Cambon in the 1st arrondissement of Paris.
The Assumption celebrates both death and resurrection. This is why it seemed obvious to us to honor, on this place of worship, the work of Bruno Catalano, celebrating the abandonment of self, of one’s roots and of one’s material goods towards a rebirth through exile.
Three bronze “Travellers” who set out towards the unknown, suitcases in hand.
The worker “Bleu de chine“, the artist “Van Gogh” or the mystic “Non finito” looking in the same direction but taking different paths.
Voluntary journey towards a horizon that we embrace and that we would like to be infinite, or forced journey, constrained by exile and suffering, in search of freedom and guided by survival. Bruno Catalano’s traveller is this man left to himself, a man propelled into the infinity of time and space.
His house is now only a suitcase and his being, gradually, will strip itself of everything it believed indispensable, of its whole self so cleverly constructed by our societies. He is no longer the man of a world, but the man in the world, still imbued with his culture but now fragile in the face of immensity. His quest will not be without damage. A defragmented, destabilized man, stripped of his bearings, he walks towards his salvation as much as towards his loss. From now on, everything will have to be reinvented. This traveler escapes from himself, to meet his unknown land.
Bruno Catalano began his career in 1990. The universal theme of the travel has always inspired him. Since his first work on clay, hundreds of travelers were born from his hands. The main engines of its creation are exile and detachment. Bruno Catalano expresses the idea of a nomadic humanity, proud of misfortune, in perpetual quest for a better future. His unique and original artworks reflect the feeling of distance of the artist, torn from his native country during his migration. This emotion is expressed through a stripping of the work through its process of insertion of voids in its characters on the road. The talent of Bruno Catalano lies in his ability to endow the elusive material with a transcendental essence. Being a romantic dreamer, his subject-sculpted cause takes shape in the fantastic frame of an ideal world where love, peace, beauty and harmony reign. These individual portraits are highlighted by daily scenes of travelers, strolling the empty spirit but transmitting a vibration, an unconscious sound. Bruno Catalano tries with this concept to address the men of today whatever their age, driven by this need of escape, persuaded to find elsewhere the happiness that they have not managed to achieve. Bruno Catalano was born in 1960 and now lives in Marseille.
