PRESS CLIP:

NEW YORK TIMES

«SETTING UP THEIR OWN TROMPE L’OEIL TOWER»

“It is so lifelike, so convincingly three dimensional, you have to touch it to adjust your eyes … startling forgeries.”
Penelope Green, “Setting up their own Trompe l’Oeil tower”, New York Times, 05/2005, US.

“Patrick’s paintings are highly proficient and awe-inspiring, reflecting his serious studies of the Masters. His sky paintings are serene, expansive, and meditative. His trompe l’oeil paintings are modern, narrative and provocative.”.
Renee Phillips, Manhattan Arts International and member of the International Association of Art Critics, US.

“ Trompe l’oeil artist Patrick BANCEL’s real aim is not to fool but to please…”
Eric Feil, “Friendly faux”, New York Spaces Magazine, 12/2005

« Patrick Bancel is both young, vivacious, sensitive and reserved. He has penetrating eyes. He glides with ease from profound observation to amusing perusal. He can be carefree or solemn. A determined worker, he knows where he is going. An extreme kindness guides his step. He divines the beauty, has premonitions about it, makes it born, amplifies it. He is a magician. He hears much more than words. He has the skillful brush, a feather, to say things with humour, tenderness, sometimes seriousness. His thoughts are always expressed with subtlety, delicacy and elegance. He is a samurai of expression, a calligrapher of ideas. «
Claude Helguers, Art critic, Belgium.

«Amazing result. Impossible for non well-informed eyes to see if it’s real or not»
Marie de Tournemire, «Trompe l’œil paintings fits everywhere «, International Edition of Figaro France Amerique, 07/2005, US

“Patrick’s eyes illuminate at the mere mention of the name New York. It’s with a great enthusiasm he recalls his professional -and personal- path which led him to leave Salon de Provence to move in New York.[…]”It’s a town that exudes such an energy. An energy favorable to creation which allows to speed up and progress.”[…] Sign of recognition, he became a Member of The National Arts Club […]”In New York, everything is possible!”
Yves Michel, “Patrick Bancel, the American Dream”, Ensemble, France, Summer 2004.

“This is where everything links together: one grants him two pages in the decoration magazine «Cote Sud», He wins the International Competition for Painting in Cannes and achieves his American Dream: working in the United States, and specially in one of the bastion of the Art and Fashion, New York.[…]Today, it’s been a year and half  he works as a free lance, in the mythical city, and with an almost insolent achievement, which is due solely to his immense innovative talent.[…]Patrick Bancel is one of the rare French people being a “Who’s Who International” Member”.
A. MA., “The Trompe L’Oeil that fascinates The All New York”, La Provence, France, 02/2004.

“When Patrick Bancel starts talking about his activity, the heat of the flame that burns inside him quickly becomes visible.  This artist from Salon de Provence has indeed become one of the biggest specialists in the world of Trompe L’Oeil. This comes as no surprise, his paintings are more real than reality itself. “
J.J.A, “A talent which doesn’t mislead”, Accents Magazine, France, 12/2000.

“In a subtle play filled with poesy and mystery that modifies the reality, Patrick Bancel reveals in his paintings a world, his world, in which he invites us to enter.[…]From decoration he naturally arrives to a more intimate creation that, between trompe l’œil and collage, questions a reality that is only illusion. A fruit, a lamp, some photos are objects that he uses daily, but it suffices a magic brush stroke to lift away its anonymity and to give it life. Patrick Bancel has fun confusing the senses and establishing by the same a dialogue with the spectator who is both charmed and surprised.[…]Painter of a certain reality with a dazzling technique he escapes from illusion by drinking from the sources of the essence, a light which he maturates in impalpable layers until joining its part of the shade, a necessary duality which belongs to any thing, any being.”
Sylviane Casorla – Director of Publication, “Strange and surprising”, Atrs Croises International, France, 09/2000.

“He adores to tease the one who looks at, and who very often will fall into the traps that Patrick sets up for them. True photographs hung on a false cloth line with fake shadows. True stamps embedded within the material with the edges falsely painted bent.[…]“I am a hard worker” he says. “I don’t know the dreaded white canvas or the lack of imagination.”
Pierre Bohler, “Patrick Bancel: an art work made of Light and Space”, La Provence, France, 04/1999.

“Eyes laugh in his young face when he confesses: “My specialty is forgery !”…The realism is so much that a thief, even well-informed, can’t make head nor tail of it.[…]Masterful Trompe L’Oeil”.
Muriel Gautier, Emmanuel De Toma et Joel Laiter, “The color at the end of the brush”, Cote Sud , France, 05/1998.

“And when you reach the level of perfection that Patrick Bancel has reached, it is not excluded that you’ll fail in attempt. After being misled in trying to seize the cords surrounding a curtain, or the keys of an hotel room quietly arranged on the table. Or a piece of cloth fixed on a window, believing to pass through a door become unreal.[…]Because he likes to play with us, there is as well another thing in a personal and original pictorial design, highlighting, at the same time a real talent and a beautiful originality, as for the formats, as for the the richness of the nuances superbely done and which gives their true dimensions to the creations presented.”
Pierre Bohler, “Patrick Bancel : Magician of the Trompe l’Oeil”, La Provence, France, 11/1999.

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