PressLUIS MARCEL
Director of the Gallery “Les 4 Coins”, director of the museums of “L’Art en Marche” of Lapalisse and Hauterives.
September 6th, 1998.
The teachers escorting their pupils to the Museum, see a work about memory, the memory of the diabolical human adventure which starts again every day. The genocides, the ethnic cleansings, are our everyday life.
Due to demagoguery, we will end up forgetting what a MURDERER is.
And yet, every day thousands of men are killed, slaughtered by MURDERERS.
Some others say : “these works are bewitchedˮ, “these works are evilˮ.
If it was the case, they could be, at the most, filled with hatred. It is rare to feel love for his ennemies.
It is true that after a life of reflection, of prayer, of wisdom, we can forgive, but what an initiatory way to travel… What willpower!
What an ordeal! Does life have to be a way of the cross?
And, of course, comes back more often us the term “morbidˮ. (sic)
The visitor of the works of BRAUNSTEIN becomes aware that death is a reality, here palpable, and that he is, him too, going to die one day. I wish for him, as for myself, that it be in his bed, surrounded with the ones who love him or with the ones he loves (hoping they are the same)…
Not necessarily in a gas chamber, during an attack or split in two by a machete.
Yes, BRAUNSTEIN tells us all this. He dares to show the non-compliance of life, to transgress
the decline of man.
His knowledges in the kabbala, in religions, force us to a symbolic interpretation of his work.
Nothing is left to chance, the knots he weaves are counted, their distance too, according to the symbolic system of numbers.
BRAUNSTEIN asks us to think about life, about man, about what we do with our life. To think about religions we have invented… why?… in whose interest?…with what consequences ?…
BRAUNSTEIN exorcizes his story, his stolen childhood, broke by murderers.
Will he heal one day?
He asks himself and asks us the question: “Why does man always start the same madness again? Have we lost memory ? Are we gods with the power of life and death over our fellows?ˮ
An exhibition of BRAUNSTEIN is a burning chapel that we should go through in contemplation
and swear, going out : “NEVER AGAIN!ˮ