The context

"Football, like art, is a common language that federates diversity... "Since its creation in 1897 in Saint-Ouen, the Red Star Football Club has forged its legend not only on its sporting successes but also on a committed social, educational and cultural policy, heir to the philosophy of its founder Jules Rimet, who created a joint reading club at the football club with the ambition of "training the body and awakening the mind at the same time".
Convinced that art and culture are essential to grow and open up to the world, it is in this same spirit that the current president of the club, Patrice Haddad, its director, Pauline Gamerre, and several members of the sports team wanted to commission a work of art for the Red Star that embodies its values. "Discovering art is also and above all giving them the opportunity to contemplate it", they wrote in December 2011 to Jérôme Poggi, mediator approved by the Fondation de France to implement the New Patrons action, thus expressing their desire to offer the Red Star its "masterpiece".

The commission

Two years of study will lead to a complex and meticulous work : a polyptych composed of eight oil paintings on wooden panels, which offer different points of view on the Bauer stadium and the life of the club. Match, field, stands, supporters, corridors, changing rooms, screens, smoke, refreshments, media reframing, field and counterfield, time and counterfield, time and counter-time : the eight panels convey the complexity and richness of the club in all its dimensions, sporting and performing, educational and cultural, social and friendly.
For its inauguration, the polyptych commissioned from Guillaume Bresson was installed in the stands of the Bauer Stadium itself, dominating the field throughout the day in a setting reminiscent of the ritual ceremonies that marked the delivery of the great artistic commissions during the Renaissance.

Guillaume Bresson

Revealed to the general public in 2010 in the exhibition Dynasty at the Palais de Tokyo, highly acclaimed at the Avignon Festival in 2015 with a solo exhibition, Guillaume Bresson developed a pictorial technique that would draw on the heritage of great classical painting to reflect very contemporary subjects. At the crossroads of painting, photography and cinema, his work absorbs the signs of our times with a remarkable capacity for synthesis.