“A piece by Guy Mansuy is sometimes a little museum of deformed and rejected life, or a construction punctuated by, and set to the rhythm, of homages. But most often it is an icon without any obvious perspective that just aims to remind us of the humble and simple face of life, which smiles at us each day with all its colours and which we so happily abandon for vein and misleading newness. The mystery is not hidden behind the image presented; it is between the image and us. It enlightens us, if we want to take it for what it is. We see in it all its features, its grooves and its wrinkles, its variations in tone and light. We can touch it, if we dare, and read the soft and rough materials like Braille. We feel a rhythm, almost like lively music for which we have forgotten the dance. Then, the mystery takes form. From this architecture, this assemblage, these colours and these materials, a poetic journey is born, one which flows in grains of sounds, words and phrases, just as much as of images. These are sometimes archaic, sometimes of a day-to-day banality. But at the bottom of this mystery we feel that beauty is within arm's reach - that memory is also the memory of the present, that we can build with nothing and that erosion is only an impression. That nothing is really forgotten. That each bit of life has its place in the creation and that a great harmony can spring from the most humble moment.
And from this harmony of things from life and time, from this recuperation, this construction, Guy composes music. It is perhaps because of this that he sways constantly...But always forward”.
Guillaume Gallienne, Actor and Comédie Française member
Extract of the book Guy Mansuy, Galerie Capazza Editions, 2014
“Guy Mansuy gladly plays the role of precise and patient guest of the woods and forests in which he roams around the essential origin of the cardboard that he will fold, cut and then stick at his own pace. Like a Jacques Prévert character, when he sees a tree, he already sees the paper or the cardboard that he will select, cut and then stick beside other objects from another forest. He certainly understands what René Char said about his friend Georges Braque that, "art is a road that ends as a path, as a springboard, but in a field which is ours".
Guy Mansuy offers us various fields. They are all made, unreal and surprising. His style is prominent and it enchants us, as the shapes and colours play around in a space which belongs to no other than the artist. Misplaced but not exiled, the materials used live another life; at least this one is bound to have music composed by desire and play. The pictures are, therefore, mirrors where some memories remain; memories whose identity and origin we don't know, but, as Jean Cocteau said, they make us think about them”.
Tahar Ben Jelloun, writer, won the Goncourt Prize (France's most prestigious literary award),
Extract of the book Guy Mansuy, Galerie Capazza Editions, 2014
Charleville-Mézières, Galerie d’établissement des Collèges Jean de la Fontaine et Fred Scamaroni, France
Musée de l’Ardenne - Musée Arthur Rimbaud, Charleville Mézières, France
Musée de la Poste, Paris, France
Deutsches Ledermuseum, Offenbach sur le Main, Germany
Fond Régional d’Art Contemporain Champagne Ardenne, France
Fond Régional d’Art Contemporain Lorraine, France
Fond Régional d’Art Contemporain Paris, France
Maison de la Culture André Malraux, Reims, France
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