Wallpaper paintings

The Sébastien Ricou Gallery is pleased to present, for the first time in Belgium, the work of Renaud Regnery (b.1976, Épinal).

Between obliteration and genesis, the artist’s paintings are determined by the materiality and colour of the underlying wallpaper, as the first charac- teristics of the canvas. From then on, Regnery starts the creative process at the zero point of the image – the pure ornament. Between automatic writing, seemingly naïve, and following a calculated system, the antipodal moments of these abstract compositions merge in ways that blur the tracks of stratification. Consequently, the artist seems to disturb the chro- nology of his paintings whose surfaces remain in constant mutation. The pictorial and decorative elements blend together constantly. Once finished, the canvases seem to conserve the baroque aspect of the wallpaper while their surfaces seem to tilt between primary ornamental function and orga- nic aspect. Regnery uses in particular the technique of « sugar-lift etching » to create forms in negative and finally as a writing medium, giving the illu- sion of a stencil. Thus, the gesture appears at once assertive and effacing.

The work of Renaud Regnery follows in the tradition of abstract expressio- nism. Furthermore, treating the surface like a space of memory, the artist relies on ornamentation while working against it.

Renaud Regnery lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the École Natio- nale des Beaux-Arts of Paris and at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste of Dresden. His work has been shown in several exhibitions or places as Le Printemps de Septembre in Toulouse, Kunsthaus Braunschweig, Atti- tudes in Geneva or Sox in Berlin.

Text by Alexandre Daletchine