The double solo exhibition "Fernando Bryce et Andrea Mastrovito" is part of the official 2012 program of “Printemps de Septembre,” the Toulouse Biennial, curated by Paul Ardenne and entitled “L'Histoire est à moi!”
Both artists draw on images from the past to construct their work.
Fernando Bryce, an artist fascinated by documents, copies here the photographic portraits of the martyrs of Châteaubriant from a commemorative publication of the resistance dating from 1951. He reactivates historical memories.
While his drawings are mimetic, they are also analytical.
The artist questions the ongoing process of reconstructing history and the
role of each individual in building collective memory.
Andrea Mastrovito draws as much from the classical repertoire as from the modern, as much from figures in art history as from contemporary figures, with Saint Cecilia rubbing elbows with rockers.
He recreates the whole in a mixture of characters and genres where the meaning lies in the links that can be made between the signs of different eras.
In Colomiers, references to art history rub shoulders with those to history.
Taking the title of Delacroix's famous painting Liberty Leading the People,
the artist presents characters animated by the breath of fans, clinging
to fixed flags. Andrea Mastrovito plays with symbols. It is no longer the
flags that flutter in the wind, but the men, who, manipulated by the banners,
become the playthings of ideologies conveyed by nations.