For her third solo exhibition at the Galerie Christophe Gaillard, and with infectious enthusiasm, Rachel de Joode pursues her line of inquiry into the work of art in the digital age and the relationship between photography, sculpture, painting, and exhibition space.
For us, she invents a world in which confusion dominates: confusion over the nature of the materials used (is it painted, printed, modelled?), about the textures (is it smooth, pitted, rough?), about the volume (is it in two or three dimensions?), but also about the multitude of references that she joyfully assembles (references to classical painting, surrealism, abstract expressionism, conceptual art, or pop art). Because Rachel de Joode experiments with creation playfully. Both the child’s play and the actor’s play, thanks to which the material, the work, the artist, and even the gallery are transformed, metamorphosised and renewed. This playful approach, inherited from the dadaist subversion that appeals to her, is closely linked to collage, to the heart of her work. Collage, made on her computer then printed out and heightened by other actions (piercings, brush stokes, framing, or hanging) refers – updated in this way – to screens and to the flood of images that they encourage to the point of vertigo.
At the Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Rachel de Joode challenges the white cube as a neutral space (the critique of which was formalised from 1976 onwards by Brian O’Doherty, in a now famous essay) by fully integrating it within the artworks. So the walls of the gallery are invaded by new “digital paintings”: those in large format featuring irregular edges that escape from the frame, but also those that are perforated and smeared, and without forgetting the works in relief – allusions to Frank Stella – also containing holes, presented against a wallpaper designed especially for the exhibition. Finally, in a counter movement, transposed within the virtual space, the artist invents parallel and animated entities, with a series of NFT counterpoints, an “activation” of the exhibited artworks, to use a term the artist is fond of.
Camille Viéville, September 2022.
