L’ange, 2021
Pen on paper
21 x 14,8 cm / 8,3 x 5,8 in.
Titled upper left and signed and dated lower right

Elephant boy, 2015
Pencil on paper
21 x 29,7 cm / 8,3 x 11,7 in.
Signed, dated and titled upper left

Dormeuse, 2016
Sanguine on paper
75 x 110 cm / 29,5 x 43,3 in.
Titled upper left and signed and dated upper right

Untitled, 2016
Charcoal on paper
110 x 75 cm / 43,3 x 29,5 in.
Signed and dated upper right

L’enfant, 2016
Charcoal on paper
110 x 75 cm / 43,3 x 29,5 in.
Signed and dated lower left and titled lower right

Stillness, 2021
Acrylic on fabric
81 x 60 cm / 31,9 x 23,6 in.
Signed, titled and dated on the back

Buste, 2021
Acrylic on fabric
116 x 89 cm/ 45,6 x 35 in.
Signed, titled and dated on the back

Untitled, 2021
Acrylic on fabric
120 x 120 cm / 47,2 x 47,2 in.
Signed and dated on the back

Shadow study, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
150 x 120 cm / 59 x 47,2 in.
Signed, titled and dated on the back

Buste, 2020
Acrylic on fabric
190 x 190 cm / 74,8 x 74,8 in.
Signed, titled and dated on the back

Bryan Ley was born in Lima, Peru in 1988. He arrived in the French city of Limoges at the age of 10 months, and still lives and works there.

From 2007 to 2010, he started to study the applied arts in Poitiers and then in 2010 and 2011 he was at the Van der Kelen Institut supérieur de peinture in Brussels. Finally in 2011-2012, he attended the Académie libre de la Grande Chaumière in Paris.
In 2017, Ley won the first prize in Painting of the Institut Bernard Magrez in Bordeaux.

His painting treats the human figure in an anonymous state which appears not to be searching for its identity but is rather seeking a reinvented world. Here the artist tends towards photographic realism, he is extremely meticulous in showing his figures. Ley manages to give these anonymous people their essence, a soul, while defending his figurative approach. There is no moral judgment in Bryan’s work. His work concerns human beings and human beings are at its heart. Refraining from any social or political criticisms, he chooses to allow only the paint to speak. Direct and penetrating painting, where anything can be included: melancholy, calm, liberty, anger, pain, concentration, nostalgia, dissatisfaction and expectation, in an infinite variety of combinations.

As Aristotle wrote: “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance; for this outward appearance and details do not constitute true reality”.

His recent work with materials such as cloth reveal his desire to promote the support. There is black, grey, white, but when colour appears, it is often in the form of stretched patterned cloth on which the artist has painted a face, a body or clothes. They seem to be emerging from the painted surface, although sometimes the whole body appears to be imprisoned in the cloth. Beyond this appearance, the use of light and shadow on the canvas is obvious to create an atmosphere at times tragic, even distressing, or sometimes calm and melancholic. Bryan Ley uses these contrasts. Against a neutral background, a scene can be lit like a theatre stage while the bodies remain folded in on themselves, stiff, inert, locked in their meditation. In most cases, the gaze is serious, the lips closed and yet a myriad of emotions invades you in a threatening tranquillity like a euphoria full of gentleness.

These young men and women posed like humanity marching towards an ineffable world, are they not the reflection of our society?