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.
Started in Paris, the series Travels on the Motif is above all the result of several stays in Brittany. Each canvas was created facing nature, facing the sky, and bears the name of the place where it was created: Champ de Mars, Dinard, Baie du Mont-Saint-Michel, Île-de-Bréhat, Crozon, Île Bruc, Belle-Île… Renk follows the path of the Impressionists and, like them, carries his materials for painting outdoors without any preliminary sketch. He paints «on the motif».
An autodidact artist, he uses the aerosol spray to represent skies where colors fade to reveal harmony. The sky is at the center of his research, not for its picturesque effect but to illustrate, spontaneously, the variations of colors, shadows, and lights. These works are an accumulation of his «Renk» tag, with different sizes and colors, repeated infinitely until they disappear.
While graffiti is a medium of expression often associated with notions of protest, appropriation, and territory, Renk, by contrast, seems determined to make his tag disappear by repeating it endlessly, while retaining the creative gesture and the aerosol technique. The tireless repetition of his tag has always been the foundation of his works, but his method evolves with each series. Until now, all his paintings were created from his imagination and produced indoors. Renk begins to paint in the daylight, face to face with nature, after setting up a stretcher in the vineyards during a stay in the South of France. And soon his first canvases painted while contemplating the sky are born.
«I come from graffiti. My intention was to go into the studio to make my painting, and after a few years it was the opposite. It became ‘I want to get out of the studio’.» (Renk, 2022)
An artist full of contrasts, between abundance and order, maturity and childhood obsessions, the serenity of his paintings and the energy of his creative act, Renk brilliantly blends his influences from street art and impressionism to create Travels on the Motif.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Born in Rennes in 1987 into a family of artists, Walig Nicolet, known as Renk, began writing graffiti in 2000. Trained as a graphic designer, he has devoted himself to painting since 2010. Without giving up the spray can, he repeats his tag until it dissolves into skies vibrating with light, often painted outdoors in Brittany. Presented by Galerie Enrico Navarra in Paris and Le Muy since 2023, he also exhibits in New York and Chongqing.
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