I have been religiously following artist Bernard Pras’s work for quiet sometime now and Pras never fails to surprise his audience with his unique art of assembling everyday objects to create anamorphic effects in his portrait works. For those of you who don’t know a Bernard Pras, he is considered to be one of the strangest, yet most original artists of present generation. The 56-year-old artist was born in 1952, in the south-west of France and spent his childhood in a toy-store. He later began working as a painter and sculptor of recovered objects. After a short career as an art teacher he came up with a new form of expressing himself.
Bernard Pras has created some amazing portraits of famous celebrity figures like Einsten, Bob Marley and Salvador Dali by assembling ordinary objects like used toys, tools, clothes and pieces of rubber. His works appear like random stacks of scrap material when viewed from too close, but the true essence and beauty of his works is revealed when viewed from a certain angle and distance.
The latest work of Pras is a a portrait of one of the first Burkinabé actor Sotigui Kouyaté, which has been created from several objects including clothes, paint, wood, rubber, and other objects found or scavenged around the installation site. The artist is also showing some of his past works which include the famous Van Gogh portrait at the MazelGalerie in Brussels till 20th April 2013. Check out some of the images of his latest works below and also check out the Einsten, Salvador Dali and Che Guevara portraits.
