Kevin Rouillard “Collision”

The Chimney

poster for Kevin Rouillard “Collision”
[Image: Kevin Rouillard “Extrait –Tôle Choc” (2017) © Galerie Thomas Bernard - Cortex Athletico, Paris]

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The Chimney presents Collision by French artist Kevin Rouillard, his first solo exhibition in the United States. Inquiring on objects’ relationship to context and value system, Rouillard’s artistic practice resembles that of a researcher, an excavator or an archeologist. He collects, classifies and assembles objects he encounters to redistribute and liberate them in order to explore their dynamic potential.

Inside The Chimney, Rouillard covers the walls with his latest series of “Extrait –Tôle Choc” that constitute assembled puzzle-like shipping barrels originally used between France and Cap Verde to transport commodities. The space becomes a duplicate site where different geographies and times coalesce - the existing walls of a 20th century power station intersect the commercial sphere of a now global Africa.

For Rouillard, the works’ political, economical or societal references bear little importance compared to their visual quality. While the barrels hold the vestige of their past function as objects in transit, Rouillard transformed them into dynamic objects to reveal their contemplative and optical qualities. The works imparts a binary sensitivity that veers between an abstract and mild state and a majestic monumentality. Their mechanical coolness that stems from the steel, their ‘ready-made’ colors and texture give them a presence that transcends their utilitarian function. This series echo the “Color Field Painting” of the 1950s American painters as well as the minimal gesture of Minimalism; an aesthetic that Rouillard consciously absorbed to regenerate them through vernacular objects.

Their floating and subtle varying hues convey an atmospheric quietude that conceals their arduous production. Through a collaborative process, Rouillard cut the barrels, hammered, flattened and finally carefully assembled them in order to obtain their final existential state. Interested in the institutional mechanism of the artistic system, Rouillard’s artistic practice expands his role as a worker.

Rouillard recycles the containers from commodity vessels into a rigorous and dynamic redistribution of forms. “To send products to Cap-Verde, Rouillard explains, expats fill containers and ship them on cargos - the least expensive travel option. Once they reach their destination, they are transformed into doors, frying pans, houses. I have decided to transform the barrels into roman tortoise shields, similar to a collective shell”.

Media

Schedule

from September 15, 2017 to October 22, 2017

Opening Reception on 2017-09-15 from 18:30 to 21:30

Artist(s)

Kevin Rouillard

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