René Wirths — Jazz — Templon Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: February 27 → April 6, 2016

Six years after his last Paris exhibition, Belin artist René Wirths is returning to the French capital with a new project centring on objects and their representation. His work will be shown in the Impasse Beaubourg space in an echo of Accumulations, the exhibition of Arman’s work showing in Galerie Daniel Templon’s other space opposite, on Rue Beaubourg.

René Wirths is fascinated by the question of perception and focuses exclusively on meticulously painting everyday objects. Wirths subjects the objects to an exhaustive visual examination in the natural light of his studio. He then reproduces them on a sober white background in minute detail, without the distraction or confinement of reality. Each piece incorporates the presence of other objects via reflections of nearby canvases in the studio and, often, the presence of the artist himself. René Wirths has thus developed an artistic practice that is closer to conceptual art than traditional painting. His approach lies on the dividing line between accessible reality and subjective view, optical phenomenon and context, homing in on our perception of images and their component objects within our experience of the world — a perception that in reality is rooted in painting.

The exhibition’s title, Jazz, is playful and evocative, reflecting the artist’s open working process. René Wirths’ influences and outlooks are not confined to the sphere of realism or even hyperrealism. By playing on the rhythmic appearance of his paintings, Wirths produces an ensemble similar to a complex melody, alternately slow and fast, silent and loud, intellectual and intuitive.

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Born in 1967, René Wirths has shown his work in several international galleries, including Galerie Michael Haas in Berlin. He also took part in the 2000 Geneva Biennale and has exhibited at the Museum Gegenstandsfreier Kunst in Otterndorf (Germany). In 2010, he was the subject of a major solo exhibition at the Rotterdam Kunsthal.