Walig Nicolet, known as Renk, was born in Rennes in 1987. A self-taught French artist, he moved from graffiti to landscape painting. He grew up in an artistic milieu. His mother taught visual arts, his father worked in advertising and as an artist, and his uncle draws comics. His brother and sister are much older: he grew up almost as an only child.
School, however, did not suit him. His education was turbulent, from one school and boarding school to another. In 2000, a television report on graffiti made him want to pick up a spray can. He first signed as “100REMOR” and never stopped painting. At 16, he left the school system. He later went to Cork, Ireland, to train at a golf academy. There he learned patience, consistency and self-control. These qualities would later mark his painting.
Back in France in 2007, he enrolled in a visual communication school near Paris. He then trained as a graphic designer. His series of bookmarks against discrimination won an international competition. He also met other graffiti writers and adopted the name “Renkar,” soon shortened to “Renk.” On walls, trains and vacant lots, he developed a virtuoso command of spray paint.
From 2010 onwards, painting became his sole activity. In 2011, a trip to the Sinai desert in Egypt came as a revelation. Faced with the vast sky and the desert light, he devoted himself fully to canvas. Yet Renk kept the tool and gesture of graffiti. He paints with spray cans, and his own tag becomes the very material of his paintings.
His favorite motif is the sky. The word “Renk” is repeated tirelessly, in varying sizes and colors. It eventually merges into the whole and disappears. From this accumulation emerge clouds, dawns and twilights. Colors fade into one another in an almost musical harmony. The signature is the ultimate gesture of self-assertion. Here, however, it dissolves into the landscape: writing becomes light. Graffiti thus joins the long history of sky painting.
From 2020, he undertook a series of journeys to paint sur le motif, mainly in Brittany. He painted at Mont-Saint-Michel, Belle-Île, Dinard, the Île de Bréhat and the Crozon peninsula. He thus works outdoors, without sketches, facing the landscape, in the tradition of the Impressionists.
In 2023, Galerie Enrico Navarra presented this work in Voyages sur le motif. The exhibition was held at Galerie 75 Faubourg in Paris, then at Villa Navarra in Le Muy. Paper Cloud followed at Galerie 75 Faubourg (2023–2024) and, in 2025, The Night at 60 White Street in New York. That same year, the Art Museum of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in Chongqing presented Thousand Skies, From Graffiti to Painting. It brought together more than eighty works made between 2014 and 2024.
Galerie Enrico Navarra presents the solo exhibition of French artist Renk – Thousand Skies. From Graffiti to Painting at the Art Museum of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in Chongqing from September 9 to October 7, 2025. Invited by the institution for his first museum presentation in China, Renk is bringing together more than 80 works created between 2014 and 2024 in a retrospective that traces a unique journey from graffiti to painting.
Lio Malca & Doriano Navarra are pleased to invite you to the exhibition Renk: The Night.
This highly anticipated exhibition unveils a dynamic collection of recent and previously unseen works, unfolding as a poetic meditation on the transition from day to night.
From Thursday, May 8 to Saturday, August 2, 2025
60 White Street, Tribeca, New York, NY 10013
Ground Floor
Galleries 75 Faubourg and Enrico Navarra present Paper Cloud, the second exhibition they are dedicating to the artist Renk. In his creations, Renk subjugates space through writing and the sign, through a formal language that unfolds within the pigments of his work. His gestures, his name which he incessantly affixes, question the physical materiality of the literary landscapes that take shape.
Following the exhibition in Paris, Galerie Enrico Navarra is presenting the continuation of the series at Villa Navarra. Travels on the Motif by the artist Renk, by appointment only. Painted across seven destinations from 2020 to 2022, the last eleven canvases in the series are on display all summer in this space designed by architect Rudy Ricciotti. The exhibition also reveals all the stages of their creation through videos.
Galerie 75 Faubourg collaborates with Galerie Enrico Navarra to present an exhibition by the artist Renk, consisting of a selection of previously unseen works on canvas from the series Travels on the Motif. Painted on seven
destinations from 2020 to 2022, 13 of the 24 canvases are presented today at the Galerie 75 Faubourg, and the final 11 canvases will be exhibited at Villa Navarra (Le Muy, France) this summer. The exhibition also reveals all
the steps of their creation through videos.
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