Although it is rarely manifest as such, conflict haunts Martin Bureau\u2019s entire body of work; it lurks in the heart of the many world crises and dysfunctionalities that he examines in his paintings and videos.
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Bureau\u2019s recent video series, Les murs du d\u00e9sordre\/ Walls of Disorder<\/em>, addresses one of the most significant manifestations of conflict today: the \u201cseparation walls\u201d that are cropping up all over the planet. His camera gives sight and sound to the reality experienced around three of these iconic walls: the one separating Catholics and Protestants in Belfast, the one erected by Israel to mark and enclose Palestinian territories, and the one that the Trump administration wants to build to stem the so-called tide of migrants and illegals at the Mexican border. Shown at the Cin\u00e9math\u00e8que qu\u00e9b\u00e9coise in the winter of 2019, the work\u2019s relevance was clear as the US government shutdown raged due to the stalemate in negotiations between Trump and Congress over financing the wall. Travelling shots, close-ups, soundscapes, and accounts by local residents alternate to show how this heavy infrastructure, scarring and slicing through territories and cities, far from protecting anyone or preventing clashes, entrenches the conflict at home by perpetuating fracture lines and stoking resentment or fear of the other. The enormous, Tower-of-Babel-shaped bonfires in Bonfires offer a striking illustration.
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The same tension resides in Le principe de la neutralit\u00e9<\/em>, paintings in which fearsome bunkers are grafted onto the headquarters of big Swiss pharmaceutical corporations. This architectural dystopia underscores the fear of the enemy<\/em> inherent to unmitigated neoliberalism \u2014 a fear that prevails even in prosperous Switzerland, whose neutrality is meant to spare it from all wars. The juxtaposition of contrasting motifs governing this series is a key fulcrum in all of Bureau\u2019s work, a grating dissonance in the image that lends it its unique virulence \u2014 which is not just about the topics themselves, but permeates the very material of the paintings, whose coarse surface, as if corroded or gnawed, gives them the appearance of post-cataclysmic artefact, the future survivors of the disaster and ruin of the present. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Martin Bureau
<\/strong>Les Bonfires de Belfast<\/em>, video stills from the short film Bonfires<\/em>, part of the multidisciplinary project Les murs du d\u00e9sordre<\/em>, 2019.
Photos : courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Martin Bureau
<\/strong>Les Bonfires de Belfast<\/em>, video stills from the short film Bonfires<\/em>, part of the multidisciplinary project Les murs du d\u00e9sordre<\/em>, 2019.
Photos : courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Martin Bureau
<\/strong>Les Bonfires de Belfast<\/em>, video stills from the short film Bonfires<\/em>, part of the multidisciplinary project Les murs du d\u00e9sordre<\/em>, 2019.
Photos : courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Martin Bureau
<\/strong>Les Bonfires de Belfast<\/em>, video stills from the short film Bonfires<\/em>, part of the multidisciplinary project Les murs du d\u00e9sordre<\/em>, 2019.
Photos : courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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