Polypropylène, 2024

Thierry Bronchart  

With Forever and Always, Thierry Bronchart explores our era through a simple gesture: wrapping plants in plastic. Roses, strawberries, houseplants: these symbols of beauty and fragility are enveloped in plastic film, a material that seems almost eternal. This dialogue between the irreversible decay of plants and the artificial permanence of plastic is at the heart of the series. Here, plastic becomes a mirror: it reveals the precariousness of what it surrounds, while reflecting our obsession with preserving—even freezing—that which, by its very nature, is destined to wither.

Thierry Bronchart's canvases don't accuse, they observe. The vibrant colors of the petals, the interplay of light through the translucent material, and the texture of the oil on wood celebrate the beauty of flowers, while simultaneously questioning their place in a world where everything is conditioned, preserved, even fetishized. Strawberries in an electric blue punnet evoke an almost gaudy abundance, while houseplants, suspended between their fleeting brilliance and their indestructible packaging, embody an impossible promise—that of preserving forever what, by its very nature, is destined to disappear forever.

Thierry Bronchart plays with contrasts—between the transparency of plastic and the opacity of colors, between the rigidity of packaging and the fragility of plants—to create images that raise questions. How far will we go in packaging our world? What remains of nature once it is preserved, isolated, and turned into a museum? And what if, behind these protective gestures, lies a modern vanity: the belief that we can control time, while plastic, for its part, will outlast everything?

Forever and Always is not an exhibition about the crisis, but about the precarious balance of our time. A world where beauty persists, even under cellophane, and where melancholy vies with fascination. A world where we dream of eternity, while everything is already fading away.