Guy de Malherbe

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Solo exhibition at the Galerie La Forest Divonne Brussels from 11 May to 24 June 2023.

Guy de Malherbe

Born in 1958, lives and works in Paris and in the Sarthe region.

Rocks, whether cliffs or fragments, scree or shells, have taken an increasingly important place in Guy de Malherbe’s work over the past ten years. Through painting – its movement, its color, its material – the articulation between the mineral and the organic and the dreamlike interpretation of forms appear little by little as one of the main concerns of the artist. Since 2019, Guy de Malherbe has developed an important body of work, gathered under the name “Reliefs”. A word that still evokes the rocks and landscapes of previous paintings, as much as it designates the meal reliefs that make up this exhibition: oysters, lamb chops, and plates of artichokes. Les reliefs de repas is the natural outcome of the last ten years of research: aren’t oysters an organism that becomes a mineral? A life form that becomes stone? One would even find in the concentric circles which compose them, the rhythm of the strata of limestone which structured the previous cliffs. In other paintings, astonishing mille-feuilles still take up the structure and the unctuousness. The reliefs become the gateway to a dreamlike or metaphysical universe. By going from a realistic figuration to the limits of abstraction, these paintings do not leave aside Buñuel-like surrealism leading Guy de Malherbe to suggest that he has an edible relationship with painting, while he willingly represents himself, not without humor, in the form of a pastry.