For over forty years, Bernard Piffaretti has been developing a singular body of work structured around a methodical principle: duplication. Each canvas is divided in two by a central axis. On one side, the painter works freely; on the other, he repeats — by hand, without tracing or mechanical means — the initial gesture. This deliberate act of repetition is a systematic strategy that, by neutralizing the impulsive drive of the first moment, distances expressiveness in order to better reveal the very nature of painting itself.
Far from being a rigid system, this protocol gives rise to an infinity of paintings, each autonomous, each incomparable. Piffaretti’s ever-expanding cosmogony nonetheless follows a certain idea of organic and continuous unity, where each work enters into dialogue with the others — fragments of a single text in perpetual writing. Within this vast pictorial syntax, several “figures” emerge. The classic ones unfold the process with clarity and rigor, the two halves of the canvas being executed in a single movement that repeats the still-warm layers of its making. The duplication is a purely visual doubling, performed act by act, that cancels out all subjectivity from the first part.
This structural device — simple in appearance — allows the artist to establish what he calls a metapainting. A painting in the middle, beyond, or after: meta in the fullest sense of the term. The painting does not merely show an image; it reveals painting in the process of becoming, laying the foundations for questions that run throughout the artist’s entire oeuvre. Thus, by replicating his own gesture, Piffaretti seeks neither stylistic effect nor virtuosity. The canvas becomes a critical space, a mirror held up to art history — to its ruptures, mythologies, and disguised returns.
The exhibition is open from 10 to 23.11.2025
La Villa BGL BNP Paribas
10a, Bd Royal, L-2949 Luxembourg
