LA LOI NORMALE DES ERREURS & DÉVELOPPEMENTS 2015

La loi normale des erreurs & développements / Raphaël Denis

from October 17th to November 28th 2015

“A 2006 graduate from the École nationale supérieure des Arts-Décoratifs, Raphaël Denis invents processes from which he develops series. This conceptual dimension comes to life in works associating impertinence and solemnity. Art history in the larger sense of an aesthetic and formal history, but also in the sense of the history of its milieu, with its mechanisms and its agents, becomes the object of an interrogation that aims at revealing its complexity and subterfuges.
After appropriating Dürer’s mysterious and haunting polyhedron, translated in different sculptural forms, as well as literary masterpieces (such as Madame de La Fayette’s The Princess of Clèves or Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time) transformed into monochromes, Raphaël Denis has imagined a new series from historical masterpieces looted under the Third Reich. This “negative” art history is composed by an accumulation of black panels placed inside ancient frames found on flea markets, marked with an identification number referring to the inventory number of looted works, and overlooked by an anonymous portrait. This installation allows the artist to mimic the constitution of a “war chest” by the Nazis. Beyond the violence of history (made of removals, loss, and disappearance), this work reveals the intimate and affective dimension of collecting.
The works of Raphaël Denis provide the viewer with reflection apparatuses in which often simple and radical productions invite to meditate on grey areas and on what is hidden from view.”
Pauline VIDAL
For his third individual show at Galerie Sator together with the installation Raphaël Denis is presenting at the Musée Picasso (Paris) from October 2015 to February 2016, Galerie Sator is pleased to announce the publication of the artist’s first monographic catalogue, La Loi normale des erreurs. The book will be available at the gallery and distributed in several bookstores and exhibition sites in France and abroad.
Born in 1979, Raphaël Denis lives and works between Paris and Brussels. A graduate form the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, his work has frequently been shown in France and abroad since 2005: LaM Villeneuve d’Asq, Artothèque de Caen, BK – Centre Georges Pompidou, Muse du Louvre, Maison Victor Hugo, Muse-Chateau d’Annecy, Rockbund Art Museum (Shanghai), Art Paris Art Fair, YIA Art Fair, Drawing Now... His works are part of public and private collections such as Frac Alsace, Artothèque de Saint-Cloud, Artothèque d’Hennebont, the Michel & Colette Poitevin collection, the LGR collection...
press release - FR (PDF)
press kit - FR (PDF)