Marc Halingre

Marc Halingre, born July 5, 1948 in Paris. Director-designer in several advertising agencies from 1970 to 1975, he taught drawing and painting at the same time and exhibited for the first time in 1978 at the Center Georges Pompidou as part of the "Le Temps des gares" event. In 1979, he won the Scheffer Prize awarded to railway painters. In addition to the creation of his paintings, Marc Halingre participates in the development of around thirty TV advertising spots. He also makes the sets for Pierre Pommier's film "Le Voyage sans retour" broadcast on Antenne 2 and those for the soap opera "Chlorophylle". He participates in the realization of the sets for JP Genet's film "Delicatessem" and the sets for Jean Becker's "Children of the Marsh". He created the Musée de l'Imaginaire in 1994. He exhibited at the Alain Blondel gallery (Paris) from 1986 to 1992 and at the Alain Daunes gallery (Paris) from 1993 to 2002. This modern fantasy does not come from surrealism because it in no way excludes the everyday thing: it gives it a second state. And romanticism is hardly a part of it either: in Caspar David Friedrich, nature responded to the sighs of misunderstood heroes, while, later, in Arnold Böcklin, the fantastic was accompanied by symbols: one could find justifications. Our fifty-year-old painters do not need these correspondences: for them the fantastic is always present, accepted and in short glorified. Without him, life would be unlivable because he does not terrify them. We must find a similar attitude to a painter of the same generation, Marc Halingre, who, from the outset, shows himself in possession of a field of his own and an obvious technical assurance. The paintings constitute a sumptuous invitation to visit residences hitherto unknown. He painted palaces, or official buildings, or large commercial establishments, that a Baltard or a Piranesi might have advised him to build. It is not only space that thus falls into the unreal. Time always seems double or triple: a closer examination reveals to us that the past and the dream are juxtaposed with what is: a vast projection in the areas of childhood memory and psychoanalysis, wanted or not. It is this feeling of several data being added and destroyed simultaneously, which ends up absorbing us. There is neither a key nor an explanation for this phenomenon: elsewhere has its place here, and what is wanted becomes present, but already in a foreseen future. This shows the relevance of these visions, broad, but castrating: a rather beautiful uneasiness. We will not leave unscathed from these homes where the mystery is enriched by its own comfortable spells. A painter to follow and to ponder: such is Marc Halingre. - Alain Bosquet