René Passeron

René Passeron, paintings, sculpto-paintings and Inimages

At the same moment when the philosophical thought of René Passeron (1920-2017) was the subject of an international symposium at the CNAM in Paris (November 15 and 16), the Rouan gallery presents René Passeron, the artist.

As a matter of fact, the one who claims to be plural is as much a painter as a researcher and it is a tiny but remarkable part of his plastic work that will be shown here. It includes both collages called Inimages - surely its most fulgurating invention -, relief paintings often made of heterogeneous elements, and enigmatic objects that open their shutters on surprising appearances. All these works are placed at the same time under the sign of the experimentation of the materials and the "figures of the tragic one". 

Tragedy of the human situation in its aspects at the same time the most glorious and the most obscene. It is the declination of the female body in all its states which symbolizes this fundamental situation of love as a principle of life, and of death that awaits every living being to the slightest insect. 

From then on René Passeron, the surrealist, does not hesitate to trap in his Necropolis, paintings of sand and lace, many small animals of the fields. Finally, he gives a crucial importance to the framing of each work until his powerful series of Parebrises (windshields) that shatter the limits of the painting by showing off their baroque fractures.

Fragments of a long life of research, the selected works invite to discover this artist apart from norms and fashions.

Text by Richard Conte (2019)