The "Black watercolors", initiated 50 years ago, are superimpositions of light-gray watercolor layers applied by hand to achieve deep blacks.
«The viewer deciphers the work in reverse» explains the artist, referring to the composition of these pictures, which consist of a multitude of individual paintings (sometimes more than forty). «Each new layer is a response to the previous one, positioned in an intuitive arrangement within a temporal sequence. «I sometimes spend months, even years, on a single work.» One can also see photographic films accidentally shifted, their contours blurred by sudden, erratic movements. Or glass shards spread out like fan-shaped cards. It is time recorded on paper, just like the early days of cinema and chronophotography.
The superimposition of watercolor layers is sculptural, like a mass in the making. Shapes appear, space splits according to the viewer’s point of view. In their radical autonomy, these pure, meditative sheets, which are probably Bandau’s most intimate work, allow us, in their transparent, liquid weightlessness, to take an open look at the sculptor’s desire to master a form.