UPCOMING EXHIBIT OPENING FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9
ADELE RENAULT | BANANAS
For over fifteen years, Adele Renault has been painting all over the world: the human visage, a bird and its feathers, and now here, with the Banana series, she takes on a whole new portraiture, of plant life–equatorial flora. In these artworks is a largesse of verdancy. The green of what feeds us, what breathes us, what breeds in us a respect that we wish was as contagious as many things viral in the world. And the turning of its chlorophyllic green into its complementary color, red, which becomes blue, and then purple, into a hematic color that, in this hued context, invokes joy, not pain. Renault applies paint to the surface (canvas, wall, or panel) as sunlight creates shapes upon a leaf, or the way it might simply make leaves. It is uncanny, and in her hand, the concept of repetition and randomness in nature being a mathematical or philosophical query suddenly becomes a matter resolved.
Adele Renault paints realistic portraits of pigeons and people. Her subject matter may live in the gutter, or in an ivory tower. The size of her work ranges from small canvas to giant mural. Renault grew up in a musical family on a farm in the Belgian Ardennes. At age 14, she traveled abroad alone; lived in Venezuela on an exchange; then spent two years in Brighton, England. She studied and practiced visual arts, from classical oil painting to modern-day spray can graffiti. In 2010, she graduated from the Academie Royale des Beaux Arts in Brussels, with a degree in Graphic Design. Adele currently lives and works in Los Angeles.
PREF | TMI (Too Much Information)
While the world burns and crumbles, so does the written word.
Letters are making a break for freedom. Rebelling against the pressures of modern life. Buckling under the weight of responsibility to communicate so many important messages in unprecedented times.
Sick of being tweaked and styled into the latest fonts and fashions for personal gain, to improve legibility or to appear more valuable. Being told to line up, to form neat words and behave.
TMI sees the celebration of letters in their most basic form and their liberation from corporate life. Stripped of any typographic style or rigamarole, moving freely across the space, each with its own agenda. Creating compositions and colour combinations beyond their usual means.
Instead of clickbait, catastrophic headlines and heartfelt notes, these letters are spelling out internal dialogue, snippets of conversation and sarcastic jibes*. Like receiving glitched information from the matrix. A comforting reminder that even in times of fake news, war and destruction, humour in the nuance of everyday human existence will always endure
They’re not trying to sell you anything, they’re not trying to be anything they’re not, they’re not even trying to communicate clearly. These letters are just trying to be free and have a fun day off*.
Pref is a British artist well known for his multi-layered typographic-style graffiti, and his incorporation and exploration of common words and key vernacular phrases. This multi-layering means that an element of deciphering is introduced, and the viewer is asked to disentangle images and meanings from the artwork. He initially trained at Chelsea Collage of Art, before going on to work in graphic design. The clear linear elements of his work, and his evolving interest in typography trespass across the borders of fine and graphic art in energetic and intriguing ways. He was recently commissioned by Italian fashion house Fendi to design new logos and branding, as well as lend his skills to the collection, Roma Amor. Pref currently lives and works in Los Angeles.
