Stéphane Bordarier

Since the mid-1980s, Stéphane Bordarier (born 1953) has developed a body of work that participates in this historical current in which painting becomes its own subject. Singular within the landscape of contemporary art, his practice, attentive to what he calls the 'quality of surface,' rests on a balance between imposed constraints and freedom of gesture.

Reducing progressively his painterly language to the essential — a color, a form — Stéphane Bordarier explores the potential of painting that is at once rigorous and deeply sensitive. His works arise from an immutable process: on a canvas stretched on a frame and coated with lukewarm hide glue, he applies pigment during the glue's setting time. The artist then says he is 'driven' off the canvas by the material that fixes itself, determining the completion of the painting: color and form accord in a resolution unique to each work. Generally reduced to a single hue, the surface of the canvas acquires, through the impregnation of pigment mixed with the glue, a matte appearance and a particular intensity. The painting is thus built in a close relationship to time.

In the Noires series, the color, derived from a blend of two tones laid directly on the canvas, never appears as a fixed or absolute value but reveals a subtle chromatic depth. These works, traversed by changing nuances, sensitive to light and to the movement of the gaze, reveal their process of realization.

For nearly thirty years, the Galerie Jean Fournier in Paris has supported and presented Stéphane Bordarier's work. He is today represented by Galerie Dina Vierny.

Thanks to a recent acquisition supplemented by a donation from the artist, five works by Stéphane Bordarier joined the museum's collections in 2026. They are presented here alongside several loans from the artist's studio, offering a meaningful glimpse into his career and his painterly research.