Michel Parmentier. Catalog 2023

December 1966: in Paris, the artists Daniel Buren, Olivier Mosset, Michel Parmentier and Niele Toroni started to join forces, introducing themselves to the public with the name “Buren – Mosset – Parmentier – Toroni”. The acronym of their surnames, “B.M.P.T.”, still used to cite their joint efforts today, was actually coined in 1972 by art historian and critic Jean Clair, going against the four artists’ resolution to use their surnames in alphabetical order as the sole label for their partnership.
Their way of working is based on repeated manual gestures, without any symbolic meaning, subjectivity or expressiveness. The goal is to reach the “degree zero” of painting, presenting the actual painting tools – the canvas, paintbrush and colour – just as they are, with no fancy illusions of representing something.
Ilaria Bernardi, text in the catalog

Michel Parmentier is a painter. Most often he is identified as one of the four artists making up the acronym B.M.P.T., Buren, Mosset, Parmentier and Toroni, in a period – mid-1960s France – when painting was at the centre of heated theoretical debates. Very soon, Parmentier dissociated himself, stepped to one side and went to work by himself.
[…]
Parmentier is a destabilizing figure, central owing to his radicality and nonetheless atypical owing to his place on the sidelines of the abstract panorama of the last historical avant-garde movements in France. He throws us into uncertainty as we seek to understand his relationship with painting, about which he sought to remain silent his whole life long. What was this silence made of?
Agnès Foiret, text in the catalog