« Even if there can be tracks, splashes of paint and relief, the essential lies in the scraping, the trailing, the meticulous excavation like on an archaeological dig, the hunt for ghosts hidden between two layers or levels, » Michel Butor, writer.

« Pierre Marie Brisson is a facile draughtsman, a superb and sensitive colorist, a master of design and composition, and a creator of richly tactile surfaces. » Robert Flynn Johnson, curator.

« These images remind us of something, a precious and gentle memory… » Jean Rouaud, writer.

[Press Review]

<< PROJECTIONS, Michel Butor

in PIERRE MARIE BRISSON, Michel Archimbaud Editions, 1997

Reduced to their barest attitudes like the shadows of figures bushmen from some unknown age painted on rocky walls in Zimbabwe - and not only figures, but also animals, plants and certain amazingly lifelike objects all resembling glorified bodies, with a simplification which accentuates this, lengthens that, to emphasize not only movement but also all the effort, the patience, and the lying in wait among the grasses and the bushes; and yet this is not a rocky wall, but canvas or paper, a sort of urban, or rather Parisian working class, suburban cave, a kind of tent, not standing on any surface but carved out of a conglomerate of successive layers of material and culture with roots in a thousand different corners of the earth, laid down here in the eager darkness, the journey to this place stripping them of the individual labels that would normally denote origin, place of manufacture, visas, shippers, customs authorizations and distributors; and the watcher is no longer in the savanna or the bush, but in the streets, the garbage dump, the staircase, the halls of errant universities or decaying government departments; but even if there can be tracks, splashes of paint and relief, the essential lies in the scraping, the trailing, the meticulous excavation like on an archaeological dig, the hunt for ghosts hidden between two layers or levels, surprising them in their lethargy, bringing them to light, bringing them out of hiding with the scalpel that seems as innocent as the magic lantern in the wallpaper of a children's bedroom, setting them free on this stage or arena laid bare with its scaffolding and its floodlights, this afternoon of nymphs and fauns, this spa water bath, this fountain of youth, this luminous foreign land shining like a grotto in Amalfi which, on the other side of the world, in another century or millennium beyond the liberating double or triple zero, beyond this fundamental and explosive zero where, according to the wise men of the day, we will be but an improbable projection.