Rero — Eidolon — Backslash Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: May 12 → June 23, 2012

The Backslash gallery is delighted to announce a second solo show by French artist Rero, as he again brings his outside-focused work indoors into a restricted space. Fresh from a new round of city-based actions, including in the former East Germany, Rero will be showing a number of spectacular installations alongside his now famous works depicting words and phrases with stark black lines crossing them out.

Eidolon, which means image in ancient Greek, is one of the terms the artist uses to define his own concept of negation, a concept that feeds off the image overdose common to our urban environments. Eidolon describes that which our visual sense provides for us to see, a representation of the image which is in fact no more than the mental copy of that image, just like the reflection in the mirror that is no more than illusion. The Rero’s work essentially approaches this problem of representation via the acronym WYSIWYG (“What You See Is What You Get”), the intuitive interface that shows on the screen what the printed result will be. The concept of Eidolon is again present here, as it is impossible to perfectly reproduce the printed result in virtual form. Rero claims that “What You See Is Never What You Get”.

Rero remains faithful to the same working techniques as he practices outdoors. The confines of the gallery become a playground within which the artist expresses himself in exactly the same way as he does in other disused spaces. Backslash thus becomes the outlet for Rero’s self-expression, used to build installations of destruction. The idea of disused space is a constant throughout the experience Rero offers visitors.

Rero is forever reinventing his work, ceaselessly exploring the possibilities of working in other media. The new series presented at the Backslash gallery represents both a legacy and the logical sequel to the first series shown previously. The book remains a key component and the walls find themselves recast in a more ancient style, derived from tablets. His works do, however, remain rooted in the digital era. Rero thus creates links between the classical and the contemporary.

Born in 1983, Rero’s urban outdoor works quickly made his reputation as a leading practitioner of street art. Today, he is lauded by his peers as well as the modern art establishment, and his works can be seen in a number of public institutions including Le Musée en Herbe (2011), Le Musée de la Poste (2011), Confluences (2010), L’Hybride in Lille (2009) and the Antje Øklesund in Berlin (2009).