Adele Renault – Les Hommes Intègres
Adele Renault – Les Hommes Intègres
4th of June 2016 – 30th of July 2016
art is just a four letter word gallery
Markt 6, 59494 Soest
Adele Renault paints after her own photographs and makes sure that her models never stare into the lens, in order to avoid having our gaze intersect with theirs. The portraits series have no ambition to expose any social injustice. Well beyond that, they underline by their materiality and evocative force an elegance that is omnipresent and accessible to all.
We find this same philosophy in the series of portraits of native people, which Adele Renault met and photographed in Burkina Faso and which will be the topic of her next exhibition “LES HOMMES INTÈGRES”at art is just a four letter word Gallery.
For the last decade Adele Renault’s father has regularly traveled to “Le pays des hommes intègres” (The country of genuine people) – the nickname of Burkina Faso – which is why Renault’s dream of visiting the country was strongly anchored. In 2015 she embraced the opportunity and spent a month in the West African country. During her time in Burkina Faso she traveled with a local friend to many different villages meeting, talking and photographing people, especially the elderlies. Adele’s repetitive use of overexposure gets an even deeper meaning under those latitudes where the sun is ‘over’ present.
Renault’s choice of painting the whole body of work in monochrome was a bold one giving the rich array of colors of the fabrics, the people and the surroundings. But she was strongly inspired by the color of the earth – the country is covered with red dust, which settles on everything. The shades of red changes from village to village – some have more of a yellow tint, some more of a red tint. By transferring this variety of red colors to her paintings, the artist takes the beholder on a guided journey to the country which she loves so much. It isn’t just the face which tells the story of the person. It is also the color which provides an inside into this foreign country, into the history of the villages and the people who live in their own rhythm of life.