The Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris presents an exhibition devoted to Stéphane Bordarier, bringing together works from the museum’s collection and loans from the artist’s studio.
Since the mid-1980s, Stéphane Bordarier (born in 1953) has been developing a body of work that is part of this historical movement in which painting becomes its own subject. Unique within the contemporary art scene, his practice—focused on what he calls “surface quality”—is based on a balance between imposed constraints and freedom of gesture.
Gradually reducing his pictorial language to its essentials—a single color, a single form—Stéphane Bordarier explores the potential of a style of painting that is both rigorous and deeply sensitive. His works emerge from an unchanging process: on a canvas stretched over a stretcher and coated with warm hide glue, he applies pigment while the glue is still setting. The artist describes himself as being “driven off” the canvas by the material as it sets, thereby determining the painting’s completion: color and form come together in a resolution unique to each work. Generally reduced to a single hue, the canvas’s surface acquires, through the impregnation of the pigment mixed with the glue, a matte appearance and a distinctive intensity. The painting is thus constructed in close relation to time.
In the Noires series, the color—created by mixing two tones directly on the canvas—never appears as a fixed or absolute value but reveals a subtle chromatic depth. These works, permeated by shifting nuances and sensitive to light and the movement of the viewer’s gaze, offer a glimpse into their creative process.
For nearly thirty years, Galerie Jean Fournier in Paris supported and exhibited Bordarier’s work. He is now represented by Galerie Dina Vierny.
Thanks to a recent acquisition, supplemented by a donation from the artist, five works by Stéphane Bordarier were added to the collection of the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris in 2026. In the exhibition, they are presented alongside several works on loan from the artist’s studio, offering a significant overview of his career and pictorial explorations.
© Text Courtesy of Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Image Courtesy Galerie Dina Vierny. Photo : Jean Vayssié.
