AVM Gallery
Contemporary Art Paris

The other highlight of his journey was his trip to the Pacific and his stay in Fiji, from where he brought back, in addition to his travel journals, the most oversized of his works: a fresco drawn on a scroll with a total length of 18 meters!

One is quickly intrigued by the teeming life that characterizes this new exhibition, a vast work, composed of skillfully aligned paintings, the latest creations of the imaginative – even “illuminated” – mind of “CB”. A universe “bristly” like his hair, from which emerge a multitude of legs, eyes, ears… Animals, surging from everywhere, in colors that seem to have been stolen from the “Simpson” family…

Why animals in his work? Those who followed the 2012 Angoulême festival this year rediscovered the work of Art Spiegelman and his world of mice struggling through the tragedy of the Second World War. CB was at the festival, of course! "This author blew my mind," he admits, admiringly! "But there was also Robert Crumb. From Daumier to Disney, all illustration, comics, and cartoons are teeming with animals. Animals are useful for expressing human "flaws." To this contemporary world, I only add my "wonderland." If I make a five-legged cat, I create a "fantastic" animal. I create the miracle of making it exist, because the drawing has made it "virtually" existent. Afterwards, if I make a three-legged cat, don't necessarily see it as a "fantastic" animal: it might just be a normal cat that has had an "accident"!

This kind of "disconnection," common with CB, has the power to undermine the fragile boundary between reality and absurdity. But CB has proof that reality is absurd! During his stay in Fiji, an anecdote will, in any case, have enlightened him on this fact. And as luck would have it, it was an animal who revealed it to him!

“One evening, on the beach, I was surprised to see a plastic object moving in front of me, with a certain determination! I discovered that the object was inhabited! It was a hermit crab carrying a plastic shell on its back!”

This is how great revelations are born! It's "The Age of Plastic"! Nature and its eternal values, all of that needs to be re-examined! And that's what CB is doing! He's remaking the world! It may seem megalomaniacal, but he's doing it with the means he has: in this case, his "plastic" art.

Anyway, CB is a megalomaniac, and he enjoys boasting about it! His latest "crazy act" is proof of that! He's exhibiting this month in two locations at the same time in Montmartre (three since he's also participating in the Biennale de la République de Montmartre).

"Those who pull the strings of the contemporary painting market are too selective, not focused enough on 'people's painting,'" he says. "Look who I work with! Valérie and Axel, who run the 'Rêve': artisans, who generously agreed to share a space with me for the duration of this exhibition, as did Marjorie and Jean-Pierre, from the Kerlan tapestry, a few meters away. They bring their know-how, I mine. Like them, I am providing a service! Just as we love good bread from the local baker, we love my world, because we 'dream' of it (a little nod to the brand)!"

One more word! I dedicate this exhibition to Gérard Thalmann, to whom I owe a lot, a great Parisian painter, widely recognized, who left us last January.

Eric Boldron

A dream setting : CB exhibits at the café "Le rêve", rue Caulaincourt, 75018

in Paris-Montmartre No. 13-86 June 2012