Bernard Garo’s (b. 1964) practice spans painting and photography, creating connections between these two distinct mediums. A paean to painting as much as the land,  Garo incorporates organic materials that he gathers from cliffs and volcanic craters into his large-scale canvases. The physical and mineral impact of these works brings us face to face with the materiality of our origins and the fragility of our civilisation against the forces of nature. These multi-faceted pieces can be seen as a celebration of nature, life, and mankind and his vulnerability, as well as technology and science.

 

Dedicated to the future of our society, Garo aims to preserve our natural environment and stimulate change by using any media at his disposal. These materials have ranged from sand, earth, wood ash and crushed brick, to lacquer, latex and bitumen. His works express Garo’s fundamental ideas and values, reflecting his humanist and contemporary thinking, and strong sense of both the material and visual.

 

Garo graduated with distinction from the Lausanne Art School (ECAL) in 1989. He has had over 100 solo exhibitions in galleries and museums in Switzerland, Europe, the United States and China, and represented Switzerland at the Summer Photographic Festival 2008 in Brussels with his print series Topography of Passage and Oblivion. His pictorial and photographic work has also been featured in several publications including a monograph, and can be found in numerous private and public collections across the globe. Garo currently lives and works in his studio in Nyon, Switzerland, and travels extensively to Paris, Barcelona and Berlin for projects.