Bernard Pourrière

In Bernard Pourrière’s œuvre, installations, performances, drawings, photographs and videos have a plastic autonomy every time. They constitute the successive stages of an exploration not so much of sound media as of artistic media and materials, through and with sound and its variations. [...]
Mechanical, automatic then irregular, the gestures are produced, in a way, for their own sake in Pourrière’s videos. The ephemeral vocabulary of their dynamics is such that they are devoid of any apparent meaning and the body is often in difficulty, under stress, almost ill-treated, frustrated. In fact, wedged under a table or taking up an impossible position, the body (of the artist? of the performer? of a subject at the idea stage?) at first makes a minimal movement, which then becomes comical. This follows a tradition in cinema (one thinks of the antics of Jacques Tati), in contemporary art (the performances of Bruce Nauman) and in choreography (Silence Must Be! by Thierry de Mey), combining mime and signs. The body weakens, frustrated yet determined, it becomes increasingly lost but also increasingly a musician, or rather a vehicle for sounds.
(Alexandre Castant)