Rero — Erreur dans le titre — Backslash Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: January 30 → March 29, 2014

Error in the title is a new solo exhibition by French artist Rero. The show sees the artist inaugurating a brand new format: a major installation, commonly entitled Foreword, will now precede each exhibition.

Rero’s crossed out words and expressions make their mark everywhere, from prestigious institutions to abandoned sites. The Foreword, as well as the exhibition, invites visitors on a journey into the artist’s intellect via a series of challenging works and installations. Error in the title encapsulates a new direction in the artist’s work, as he explores the invisible and its possible forms of expression, those things we do not see, but that nonetheless exist. The artist uses the limits of human vision to open up the ambiguous question of what the real could be without those limits. A multitude of psychological barriers often prevent the human mind from accessing the invisible. A process that questions this reality is necessary if we are to connect with that which we cannot see. Rero seeks to demonstrate the notion of this process in the works on display and gives physical form to these barriers in the gallery’s space. Access to the invisible thus becomes almost impossible during the Foreword and the visitor has to set the process in motion in order to overcome the obstacle it raises.

“To write is to hide a message, entrusting it to an external memory that makes no noise, that buries words, as though they were sleeping, in a state of waiting, destined for those who succeed in finding them because they know the code that can bring them back to life.”

Pascal Quignard

This quote beautifully mirrors the explorations of an artist whose works mainly take the form of writing. Words become the metaphor of the figurative and the codes needed to understand them provide access to that which we cannot see.

Rero’s well known crossed out words and expressions have lit up the French art establishment world, with shows at major venues including the Centre Georges Pompidou and Grand Palais in Paris. His work also appears in a variety of other countries.