Alberto Bali

By moving to Jean de La Varende in Chamblac (Eure), Prince & Princess Art Gallery thought that the two men could have gotten along perfectly if they had lived at the same time; indeed, both are complete artists, the first having found its major expression in writing, the second finding it today rather in sculpture, but both are painters and Alberto Bali demonstrates it. wonderfully today with his series Apophtegmes. Alberto Bali was born in 1944, in Rosario, Argentina's second city. His father, of Indian origin, then a student at the London School of Economics, was persuaded by a fellow polo player, Argentinian himself, to move to Argentina where he met his future wife, of Italian descent, as half of Argentines. A graduate of the renowned Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, Alberto Bali began studying architecture at the University of Buenos Aires, while taking painting lessons from the too little-known master, Demetrio Urruchua. In 1971, Argentina sank into chaos and the young "rosarino" left his country for England where he remained 6 years, but it was in France that he settled permanently in 1976. As soon as he arrived in Europe , Alberto Bali chooses to abandon the straight line, the rule and the compass of architects, to venture into the paths, full of surprises, of artistic expression. Among the avenues explored, there will be painting, sculpture, design, graphics, interior architecture, advertising. Graphic designer, Alberto Bali loves above all to make posters, but also books, boxes, a series of prints, serigraphs, which allows him to enter more deeply into a place, a monument, a neighborhood, a town: la Villette, the Opéra Bastille, Saint-Nazaire, la Pampa, the “art deco” villas of Hossegor. A sculptor too, playing with the ideal forms of a lost architect that he must have kept in the back of his mind, from tiny terracotta models where shadows continue the artist's work, to large architectural installations, like the 8-meter steel tower installed in the courtyard of a school in the 20th arrondissement. Interior designer, working on the image and communication of a product, Alberto Bali also sometimes finds his first loves by creating the ephemeral architectures of a stand in a large trade fair and new products from the kitchen foundry line. , Staub, by designing the graphics of a cookbook, by imagining the space of a restaurant, its furniture and its dishes, the graphic line and the visual communication of great chefs, as at Joël Robuchon but, above all, at his friend Alain Dutournier, who entrusted him with the overhaul of his dear Carré des Feuillants. Painter, finally, he is of course and above all, and, since his first solo exhibition in Paris, in 1980, will follow, almost every year, in Paris, but also in Madrid, Geneva, Buenos Aires, Munich, Barcelona. , Rosario, exhibitions often revolving around the landscape, real or dreamed, of industrial wastelands from which all human presence was abolished, of a series of gules of thieves of Buenos Aires. Today, at more than 70 years old, he indulges in an introspection in this series of large paintings, Apophtegmes, in which he stages himself with his double in nightmarish situations. There is little or no decor. Bare walls, simple furniture that is there to be forgotten. The colors are pale, washed out; no shadows like in a solar eclipse. Alberto Bali calls it mental light. The characters, the painter and his double, are dressed in a classic fashion, in the mid-twentieth century fashion. The double-breasted suit is required, often embellished with a waistcoat. The shirt is white and crisp. We feel that Alberto Bali takes real pleasure in painting the folds and folds that play with the light. The shoes are impeccably polished. If the artist is sometimes a little off the hook, he is never tramped. In each of these scenes the movement is as if suspended: a freeze frame which further adds to the drama unfolding before our eyes. Defenestrated, revolverized (without there being any need to represent the weapon) reprimanded, attacked, questioned, the artist ends up naked, dead on a hospital table, may be the victim of an operating accident. We will not know: the titles of each of his works are laconically not without irony. However, he gives us a clue: wouldn't the double also be there to relive the terrifying moments that pushed Alberto Bali to emigrate? The reproaches, the threats addressed to him by the “other” dressed in the sartorial breastplate of people of power, resurface from a dark past. If the decor has faded, the violence has lost none of its intensity. His portrayal from the back, in a blouse, completing an oversized self-portrait, in the guise of an official, pretentious and condescending artist of course tickles his ego. Is it a doubt about his course sheltered from honors or a last exorcism to evacuate the ghost of bourgeois success? The last canvas is implacable, Alberto is seated at the end of a table, at the other end his wife Martine, represented as a Sphinx. She might well ask him the riddle of a man named Alberto. It is this magnificent series, Apophtegmes, that Prince & Princess Art Gallery wanted to exhibit in the Orangery of Château de Bonneville in Chamblac (Eure).