R ARTIST - The method
R Artist is a Belgian visual artist from Liege. He plunges into committed publications and into advertisements, then he tears the conveyed message out of them, he brings the reality out and dilutes one meaning only to create some new one, which will express itself through the juxtaposition of the new order.
He is interested in everything!It can be a suggestive, colourful photograph, which was taken from a particular angle. A detail sometimes draws his attention, overwhelms him, touches him. At other times, a title, a subtitle, a sentence, or a letter, allows R Artist to begin the reinterpretation. He cuts up, tears up, and stacks. Then, the colours do invade his canvas, through touches of paint-brush, sprayed graffiti’s and stencils.
The recycling, the cutting and the gluing of newspapers and specific magazines, pieces of various broken or worn objects, are the main elements of his work.
Those are diverted from their original use and are associated with some colour, which allows the artist to bring some life to the canvas, as though it was a liveentertainment whose script had been written.
R Artistis a visual transversal artist. Painting, gluing, graffiti’s, … his creativity is limitless. It pushed him to show another side of reality. Playing and fragment and then identify something as something other. Daring to arrange pieces that do not go together. And what if life was not what is imposed on us? What if every single thing we observe and admire hided some other meaning?
The only order that R Artistimposes to himself is to untidy things in order to formulate some new substance, to offer some new reading.The smallest detail deserves consideration. One has to ponder them, sometimes several times, in order to understand their subtlety and their depth. The discovery of some hidden or subliminal message is constant.
The bright radiant colour, which reveals the force of the soul, is spread in successive and thick brushstrokes, and compels and guide the observer’s gaze.
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R Artist is a self-taught artist, born in 1979. He did not study art but marketing. He is the grand-son of thewatercolour artist from Liege Jeva(1926-2009), who studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Liege (1942-1949), where he gained several distinctions. He then received the distinguishing prize MARIE - WATTEAU. In 1996, Jean VANHERCK (Jeva) was selected to be part of the 100 best watercolour artists at the national exhibition of watercolours of Namur.His personal exhibitions in Liege: Galerie du Carré, Crédit Commegeunal, Galerie IPPA –in Louvain: Galerie Embrio–in Luxembourg: Galerie A.E.L –in the USA (Buffalo): Galerie W.E.L and his collective exhibitions in Maastricht: Galerie Signature ...
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Biography by Lara YOUSSEF
Photo of the photographer Michaël Overberg
Logo design, business cards & flyers : Anthony Ravagnan