The Film Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of recent paintings and ink drawings by French filmmaker Patrick Bokanowski. The exhibition focuses on a range of pictorial creations, executed in tempera and gouache, as well as ink drawings, produced over the past three years and unveiled for the first time at the gallery.

In addition to his pictorial work, Bokanowski will also present two cinematographic works whose creation is separated by more than fifty years. One of them, his very first film, 'Little Rootie Tooti' (1968), evokes his artistic youth, while the other, 'Hum Drum' (2021), offers a more recent perspective, presenting a painter in his studio, surrounded not only by his usual tools such as pencils, brushes and tubes of paint, but above all by his drawings, which seem to come to life. This dialogue between his pictorial and cinematographic works allows us to explore Patrick Bokanowski's artistic universe through different languages and several periods of his long and rich career.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Patrick Bokanowski (1943, Alger) lives and works in Paris. Between 1961 and 1964, he studied photography, optics, and darkroom techniques with the French painter and draughtsman Henri Dimier (1899-1986). Since 1972, Bokanowski has produced a dozen short films and two feature-length films, all employing experimental shooting, animation, and editing techniques. More specifically, he delved into lens distortions and invented various methods for capturing images using unconventional lenses, transparencies or mirrors. His cinematic oeuvre straddles the line between the figurative and the abstract, as well as between live action and animation. The musical scores for all his films were composed by his wife, Michèle Bokanowski. His photographic works, drawings, and paintings have been showcased in several exhibitions, and his films, which have won awards at numerous international festivals, have been acquired by major collections, including those of the Centre Pompidou and the Archives Françaises du Film.