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Galerie kreo x rhinoceros gallery host Ronan Bouroullec’s monographic exhibition
Galerie kreo x rhinoceros gallery is hosting a monographic exhibition of French designer and artist Ronan Bouroullec
Image: © Simon d’Exéa
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Galerie kreo x rhinoceros gallery host Ronan Bouroullec’s monographic exhibition

The French designer's display in Rome features vivid paintings, candlesticks and tables of forged steel, glass and granite, emphasising an assembly of different forms and mediums.

by Galerie kreo
Published on : Aug 27, 2024

rhinoceros gallery is hosting a monographic exhibition featuring art and design objects by French designer and artist Ronan Bouroullec from March 21 - September 8, 2024. Presented by Galerie kreo, the artist’s solo exhibition explores his diverse and vivid creations steeped in colours, shapes and forms across various mediums. It is currently on view at rhinoceros gallery’s space in Rome, Italy.

Launching a new chapter under the direction of Alessia Caruso Fendi, the gallery, located between the Forum Boarium and Circus Maximus symbolises the cultural exchange between Rome and the global community. Designed by Alda Fendi and Jean Nouvel, this space evolves beyond a mere residence into a hub for intellectual and artistic engagement. Here, art, design and contemporary ideas coalesce, showcasing unique artistic proposals through collaborations with international partners.

Since the late 1990s, Ronan Bouroullec, alongside his brother Erwan, has been producing designs for renowned companies such as Artek, Alessi, Flos, Hay, Kartell, Ligne Roset, Samsung and Vitra, and creating exceptional limited-edition furniture designs with kreo. The French artist has also mastered creating meticulous and delicate drawings that repeat sequences of lines by hand, with a Japanese felt tip brush.

Based in Paris, France, Bouroullec is celebrated worldwide for his novel designs materialising 'poetic practicality'—works that are subtle and elegant, with notes of architectural rigour and "vivid impressions, blooming forms [and] emotions," as the gallery states. He condenses his artistic exploration with these words, illustrating how his 'work evolves, diverges and flourishes across various creative realms.'

The show features vases crafted in Tajimi, Japan, informed by the region's rich ceramics tradition. Drawings, carefully executed with a Japanese brush on glossy paper, are displayed throughout the exhibition space and reveal Bouroullec’s fascination with movement and organic shapes. Previously unseen bas-reliefs, blending ceramic forms on anodised aluminium frames, blur the boundaries between painting, sculpture and design. 

Moreover, the show unveils the product designer’s new pieces, including candlesticks and table designs crafted from forged steel, glass and granite to reflect the essence of his recent project, the furnishings of the Saint-Michel de Brasparts Chapel in Brittany (which reopened in July 2023).

Bouroullec employs a method that tastefully balances 'the simultaneity of his artistic practices, privileging sensory experience, intuition and leaving room for improvisation'. This is exemplified when the artist states "If you take this vase, this table, I think the heart of my language lies in how they are assembled, in the way shapes, planes and materials come together within them."

The Tajimi vases combine five forms into groups of two, three, four or five. The elements stem from a mechanical process of clay extrusion, reinforcing the sensation of their weight, density and presence. This process enables the enamel to adhere differently to angles and other surfaces. The result is a subtle contrast that affirms form, responding to the delicacy, mystery and charm of the tiny deformations that occur during firing.

Galerie kreo remarks on the assemblage of materials and mediums: "...the search for [an] essential vocabulary reduction, balance between sensations of mass and lightness, and the vibration of things through surface treatment. Lastly, assembly of felt lines in the large drawings, whose almost total monochrome accentuates the perception of contact points, rhythmic pulsation, moments of sudden movement, and smooth transitions. What is revealed, with its gesturality, is the very time of drawing: a linear, continuous time, synchronous with the felt time, lived time, marked by immediacy, by the contemporaneity of gesture and result. The time of creation and the time of life, in harmony."

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