Galerie La Patinoire Royale Bach

LA PATINOIRE ROYALE BACH marks its tenth participation at BRAFA with a refined selection of works by gallery artists including Lita Albuquerque, Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Thomas Devaux, Michel Mouffe, Luzia Simons, and Joana Vasconcelos.
 

A major highlight is Alfredo Jaar’s iconic triptych Life Magazine, 19 April 1968 (1995), composed of three large lightboxes. Using a documentary photograph of Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral published in Life, Jaar intervenes with his characteristic precision, replacing faces with black or red dots to expose racial inequities and the politics of representation. The black dots mark African American mourners, while the red dots identify White attendees, transforming the image into a stark commentary on persistent racial imbalance. Created during Jaar’s research for Searching for Africa in Life (1996), the work similarly reveals the absence and erasure embedded in visual archives.

The gallery also presents Olga de Amaral’s diptych Corteza 2 (2015), a shimmering composition of linen, gesso, acrylic, and gold leaf. A seminal figure in contemporary textile art, de Amaral has elevated fiber to the realm of sculpture and painting, drawing on pre-Columbian heritage and spiritual symbolism. 

A third highlight is Evelyn Axell’s Le Val Vert (1971), a striking example of her pioneering feminist Pop Art. Painted under plexiglas, the work depicts a nude female figure from above, merging vulnerability with empowered autonomy. With warm, sensuous colors, Axell subverts the traditional male gaze and celebrates female erotic agency—affirming her vital, if long-overlooked, place in 20th-century art.