photo © Marie Hamel
photo © Marie Hamel
photo © Marie Hamel
Rero exhibited new work and a site specific installation at Backslash Gallery. The show titled “Error in the Title” shows us a more conceptual side to Rero. Known for his defaced word paintings and images Rero enters the conceptual realm of things. His installation engages the cerbral and more contemporary viewer, yet it is executed by one of today’s urban artists. I always look for a string of history in an artists work, where is his hand or mark in his work. This can be subtle and even invisible in most cases but its always there if the work is honest. Rero might have moved into a whole new genre with this recent exhibition but there are resemblances of his mark, whether he will embrace this new or should I say old Conceptualism is yet to be seen. I will watch his work progress and only hope that his hand remains relevant as it has done so in the past with his word art.
GF
Backslash is pleased to announce a new solo exhibition by French artist Rero. The show sees the artist inaugurating a brand new format: a major installation, commonly entitled FOREWORD, will now precede each EXHIBITION.
Rero’s crossed out words and expressions make their mark everywhere, from prestigious institutions to abandoned sites. The FOREWORD, as well as the exhibition, invites visitors on a journey into the artist’s intellect via a series of challenging works and installations.
ERROR IN THE TITLE encapsulates a new direction in the artist’s work, as he explores the invisible and its possible forms of expression, those things we do not see, but that nonetheless exist. The artist uses the limits of human vision to open up the ambiguous question of what the real could be without those limits. A multitude of psychological barriers often prevent the human mind from accessing the invisible. A process that questions this reality is necessary if we are to connect with that which we cannot see. Rero seeks to demonstrate the notion of this process in the works on display and gives physical form to these barriers in the gallery’s space. Access to the invisible thus becomes almost impossible during the FOREWORD and the visitor has to set the process in motion in order to overcome the obstacle it raises.
“To write is to hide a message, entrusting it to an external memory that makes no noise, that buries words, as though they were sleeping, in a state of waiting, destined for those who succeed in finding them because they know the code that can bring them back to life,” explains the writer Pascal Quignard. This quote beautifully mirrors the explorations of an artist whose works mainly take the form of writing. Words become the metaphor of the figurative and the codes needed to understand them provide access to that which we cannot see.
Rero’s well known crossed out words and expressions have lit up the French art establishment world, with shows at major venues including the Centre Georges Pompidou and Grand Palais in Paris. His work also appears in a variety of other countries.
To mark the exhibition, Editions Gallimard (Alternatives) is publishing a monograph on Rero’s work, available at the gallery from January 30.
” What interests me here is the representation of the material before processing . Substance which is defined as any plastic initial proposal Through this initiative , I want to give the illusion of a natural material not – transformed so that it is in fact a soft and resilient sculpture representing a bunch of land that gives the sensation of obstruction and prevents access to the exhibition. with this facility , I would reverse our perceptions. I did not want to simply transpose the natural material in an enclosed area and thus remove it from its initial medium to enclose turn in a confined space . Instead I want to reproduce nature in a material paradoxical high resilience : that is to say, polyurethane foam , creation of man petroleum actually, we do not know if we are faced with a simple obstacle, so natural that readymade . we have just moved from its natural environment to present in a space sublimation , or else face a sculpture of a pile of earth sublimate. in my reality , I thought this sculpture foam as the materialization of a psychological barrier , a wall or a barrier that prevents the passage .
At first , it does not expect to overcome this obstacle without destroying or distorting , or that is a pile of earth sculpted returns to its original shape after deformation caused by the passing visitor. In this microclimate reproduced by me , the representation of nature happens to get over on the man after his passing . He even brings a new sensation to the equation because there is deception on the first substance. Positioning it so I forces the visitor to return to interaction with the work and beyond . For this, the accomplice will be forced to change its route originally planned. “Nature prefers detours to impasses .”
Indeed, outside , the viewer passes voluntarily or involuntarily to my proposals , but here the appointment was given, it moves deliberately to come and visit the exhibition and thus is prepared to return to interaction with called out but not necessarily prepared to have to overcome a small barrier wall symbolizing that it is custom to meet every time we undertake a new project. Once the barrier is compromised , we have the right to finally penetrate the cult of thought embodied in the subject . You enter the space of traditional exhibition has been designed to be sacred . Construct an object , a life , a picture, a sense, and eventually destroy them as a child might destroy his sand castle when the tide has not done before him . Through this installation torn paper , I want to question the purpose and who will be sublimated to disappear or simply be destroyed and / or modified with time picture: ” The cult of the object is morbid , words are live … ” ”
Rero , January 2014
