Exhibition July 2009

  From Melancholy, Works Are Born Whose Depth Invites The Silence Of Introspection. The Spiritual Quest Is Not An Escape: When The Artist Searches For Life, The Artist Celebrates It, Staging The States Of The Soul.  Né In 1955, At Clermont-Ferrand, He Learned The Trade From His Father. From 1977, He Presented His First Works In His Studio, In Paris. Montmartre. In Constant And Sincere Search For The Past And Meaning, Mendrisse's Work Is A Celebration Of Life. And How Beautiful Sadness Is When It Inhabits The Artist! If Mendrisse's Paintings Are Silent, It Is To Better Appreciate The Meditations Of His Figures. Looking Away Towards The Sky Or Towards The Interior, They Appear Like Icons, Meditating On Feelings Outside. How Human. A Great Femininity, Combining Sweetness And Melancholy, Emerges, Recalling The Famous Models Of Modigliani. The Classic Mendrisse Glazing Technique Refers To The Traditional Glazing Technique. This History Of Religious Art. It Thus Echoes What His Artistic Quest: « Painting “elevates” Me Said The Painter, « It Allows You To Extract Yourself And Rejoin A Reality That Exists Within You. Superior, To Connect To The Invisible, Something That Goes Beyond Us. An Artist Says Everything In His Works, You Just Need To Take The Time To Read Them, Listen To Them, Contemplate Them To Feel Their Intense Subtlety. Mendrisse Also Knows How To Express The Ephemeral By A Different Technique This Time, Apparently More Modern, Less Finished, More Sketched. The Cut Shots Recall The Vicissitudes Of Existence. Inconstant Is The Human Race, And Mendrisse Tells It Through Paintings On Seduction, Argument, Doubt, Shyness... But Also About Partying, Dancing (tango Obviously!), About Brotherhood, Or About Family... Life Requires Both Depth And Light. Mendrisse Reveals It With A Natural Yet Subtle Style. And If Choosing Is Renouncing, Then, Like Mendrisse, Let Us Not Choose And Let Us Pay Homage To; A Star: « Ode To Life - Ode To Poetry ». A.F.