Bernard Markowicz

  • Markow­icz Gallery (Markow­icz Fine Art), Miami, USA

An Amer­i­can Collaboration

Alain and I might have met as chil­dren at school in Arras, or as ado­les­cents on the beach or at a night club in Paris-​Plage and, I like to think that per­haps our paths did cross. It was in 2009, when I opened the door to the Fardel Gallery in Le Tou­quet, that I dis­cov­ered Alain Godon’s work. I stood in front of a Bil­doRe­liefo like a child at a fun­fair. I couldn’t help but mar­vel at what stood in front of me; the colours, the places, the peo­ple with their anec­do­tal sto­ries to recount.

Alain is a won­der­ful sto­ry­teller; he takes you into his world. Who­ever you are, there is always some­thing that touches you, that speaks to you and that recalls a place or an event. Never mind, you have already been won over. Then as the owner of this Bil­doRe­liefo, I could only think about want­ing to meet Alain. I finally man­aged to meet him and we chat­ted for four hours over a cof­fee… This meet­ing would result in a col­lab­o­ra­tion in the United States.
Alain Godon is a child of street art whose work fuses the colour and gai­ety of pop art with nar­ra­tive fig­u­ra­tion. His style is unique and dis­tinc­tive. The tech­nique of his Bil­doRe­liefo is aston­ish­ing and incred­i­bly up-​to-​the-​minute. When he devel­oped this process, he under­stood how to use mod­ern tech­nol­ogy in order to cre­ate a work of art where each piece is com­pletely unique.
Alain found Miami hugely inspi­ra­tional; the art deco build­ings with their amaz­ing archi­tec­ture gave the impres­sion they were pos­ing for his paint­ings. The bright and lively colours, so char­ac­ter­is­tic of Miami, are in such per­fect har­mony with his uni­verse. I remem­ber his enthu­si­asm on see­ing a yel­low fire truck drive past – that’s the colour they are here. Alain returned one year later with a mag­nif­i­cent Miami col­lec­tion.
The New World Cen­ter designed by Frank Gehry, the per­fect back­drop for Alain’s work and depicted here on the left, hosted his open­ing night. The suc­cess of this event gives us cause to believe that Alain’s Amer­i­can adven­ture is far from over.

Bernard Markow­icz