Bertrand Meniel. Reality Unveiled

About

Louis K. Meisel Gallery is proud to announce Bertrand Meniel: Reality Unveiled, a solo exhibition of the French Photorealist artist that celebrates the release of a new book, Bertrand Meniel: Paintings, 1996-2024, published by the Artist Book Foundation. This exhibition comes on the heels of the Parrish Art Museum’s solo exhibition for the artist and will showcase a selection of his recent paintings that focus primarily on New York and the American Southwest.

One of the few major European Photorealist painters, Meniel embraced a quintessentially American style of Photorealism from the start of his career. Captivated by American cinema since his youth, he has adopted iconic American scenes as the primary subject matter of his paintings, depicting sprawling panoramas of major U.S. cities alongside Americana signage. Although he is largely self-taught, Meniel produces original imagery of outstanding quality, demonstrating a mastery of techniques that normally take a lifetime to attain.

Using a tripod and a wide-angle lens of a digital camera, Meniel takes hundreds of pictures to collect visual information for his compositions. By combining multiple photographs on a computer screen, he composes his image, being sure to simultaneously keep each element of the photograph in focus. The resulting image becomes the inspiration for his painting, which is drawn and painted by hand onto canvas. Although appearing true to life, each painting is actually a composite, capturing elements that did not occur simultaneously and in a way that the eye itself is incapable of seeing. To date, the enormous amount of detail and precision in Meniel’s work is unsurpassed.

Since his debut at the Louis K. Meisel Gallery in 1999, Meniel’s work has been presented in multiple solo and group exhibitions. His work has also been a part of a few notable international shows, such as Ipperrealisti at Chiostro del Bramante in Italy and Hyperrealism in the Blanca and Borja Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Spain. He currently lives and works in the southern part of France.