DEJONGHE Bernard, sculpture, permanent artist of Galerie Capazza since 2003

Biography

Bernard Dejonghe was born in 1942 in Chantilly. After classic studies, he attends the class of the School of Art professions in Paris from 1960 till 1965.

From 1968 and during eight years, he settles down to Fontenay-aux-Roses, in Emile Decoeur's former studio. Emile Decoeur was a ceramist master of the beginning of the century. There he approaches the work on high temperatures, considering materials as supports with reflection rather than ways of manufacturing of objects.

It is at that time that he meets Ginette Monod, stemming from glassworkers' family, who becomes his partner. They will settle down to Briançonnet, above Nice, in 1976. In this new studio, Bernard will create ceramic works of big size for architecture. In 1979, he exhibits “Thirty states of a Red” about the death of an oven, the last cooking realized before the demolition of the oven of Decoeur. An alignment of quadrangular plates covered with red enamel is presented in Daniel Sarver's gallery, in Paris.

The approach of Bernard Dejonghe, since 1970, is a search on materials, clay, glass, which metamorphose under the influence of the fire, over time and the silence. He breaks the usual rules of their manipulations, the codes of their visions. He looks for densities, for relations in spaces. In 1980, the exhibition “Frozen Clay and others” in Gérard Rignaud's gallery, in Nice, shows the experiments of the fast coolings operated by the snow on the blocks of porcelain.

He presents in 1984 an installation of hundred blue squares hanging on the light and contrasting with raw lands in the space of the exhibition “Material - Signs - Silence” at Modern Museum Art of Villeneuve d' Ascq. In 1986 his exhibition in the Romanic rooms of the convent Saint-Trophime in Arles, shows forty nine blue steles contrived in square, and, on this occasion he creates his first massive glass works influenced by his meeting with the American glassworker Howard Ben Tré. “Vertical blue” is also installed on Arpille, mountain which dominates the studio, the time to shoot a movie.

His research work turns to the control of the complex technologies bound to the massive glass and to its possibilities of expressions. He is then close to a scientific approach by his experimental look towards the mineral world and its chaotic variations. During the decade of the 1980s, he participates in all the big exhibitions concerning the ceramic and the glass. In 1991, Bernard Dejonghe creates his first still grindstones, series of white ceramic in the silent sobriety. The forms of sculptures are close to the sign, simple, timeless: lines, circles, columns, triangles … We can see the influence of the various movements there of this period as Support/Surfaces, the minimalism, the Land art … In 1992 Bernard Dejonghe installs a triangular glass column to Clues of Guy and in 1994 a glass antenna and a seven meter concrete on the valley of Caussoles. The same year, he finds itself beside Howard Ben Tré during an exhibition at the Museum of Modern and contemporary Art of Nice.

Since 1989, Bernard Dejonghe paces up and down deserts: Mauritania, Algeria, Egypt, Chad, Sudan, Niger. He looks for archaeological tracks of primitive life, rupestral inscriptions or still cosmic glass there. He gets fresh ideas there. Earth and glass complement each other to speak about the same thing, the mineral universe which surrounds us.

We find the tracks of these journeys in the big personal exhibitions of the artist which stood out the decade 1990, to the Museum of the Decorative arts of Paris, to the Museum of the Former Bishop's palace of Evreux, to the Museum Bellerive of Zurich, to the Museum Ariana of Geneva, to the Museum of contemporary art of Dunkirk, to the Château d’eau of Bourges …

In the late 1990s, the glass pieces are purer, without crystallization, further evoking the cosmos, the origin of the world. Bernard Dejonghe is working on new copper reds, deep blacks. The color is treated as a material. The “formes brèves” appeared in 2004. They repeat, all the same, all different, as the series initiated thirty years before. In 2007, they are hung in front of the altar of the Chapel of Mercy, in Vallauris.

He was awarded many international prizes, the last was to be nommed Master of Art by the Ministry of Culture in 2006, his works are parts of many international public collections.

Awards