During his more than thirty-year career, Gil Bruvel has passionately followed an ever-changing, organic flow of artistic expression as it has moved through a series of mediums and forms. Each one reflects the artist’s aesthetic sensibility and thoughtful perspective at the time while continuously remaining open to the inner nudges inherent in a truly creative life. And in each approach—from surrealist-inspired and fantastical imagery to three-dimensional functional and sculptural art to his Flow series—he has drawn on threads of creative stimulus and artistic mastery that began very early on. 

As the son of a renowned cabinetmaker in southern France, Gil absorbed the precision of hand and an eye for design. Studies in the fundamentals of drawing and sculpture began when he was nine. Later, apprenticeship in an art restoration workshop provided an excellent art history education with intimate, hands-on insight into techniques of the Old Masters and fluency in 20th-century art. By the time the young artist set up his own studio, he was combining these and other creative sources with a finely honed eye for recurring patterns and motifs in the natural world. Many themes that define Bruvel’s work culminate in his most recent series, “Bending the Lines.”

At first glance, we recognize the ever-prevailing human form but are instantly transfixed by the thousands of wooden shafts that comprise the work. The pixelated outlines mimic our complex neural pathways, while his use of gradient color reinforces our minds’ interconnectedness. The wood is charred to show the impact of natural phenomena on the physical form and its inherently transient nature, which is transformed by the passage of time, revealing further patterns and detail.