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Bas-Reliefs

Bas-Reliefs Ronan Bouroullec - Bas-Reliefs
Ronan Bouroullec's ceramic bas-reliefs.
We could look at Ronan Bouroullec's ceramic bas-reliefs and see traces of a language we recognize: the silhouettes of familiar objects, the contours of known landscapes. We might be tempted to look at the work as an alphabet of mere things, think of the pieces "objectively." But as tableaux, the reliefs are not quite right: one has an edge that goes too far, another a circle that's off-center and about to roll, and still another, a pinkish mass that could topple over.
Bouroullec's work is most rewarding if we listen as it asks for a new language altogether. Languages have always been born from clay (one thinks of cuneiform seals); it's easy to believe that Bouroullec is developing his own. At the very least, these pieces – somewhere at the intersection between painting, sculpture, and design—demand new verbs, words like "bevel" and "disintegrate." (And it's possible, the works say, that there is nothing so lovely as a beveled edge: the way they taper is like a caress. The way they dissolve onto a background feels digital and also deeply analogue. These effects are both visual and tactile, as in: we see them and we want to touch them.)
The compositions can speak because they are alive, masses of ceramic breathing in a metal atmosphere, on a planet that is strange but inviting. Like other languages, Bouroullec's seems to have a grammar. Forms repeat and the palette is consistent, like a dialect. Where there are slight variations, the works prove the rule. Some compositions get repeated and flipped upside down. Bouroullec's process is also inherently syntactical: while the finished works have the appearance of precise composition, they're arranged ex post facto from separately formed elements. Bouroullec assembles the reliefs only after the individual elements are fired; some inevitably break in the kiln. Like sentences, Bouroullec's compositions are sequences of fixed parts. Like poetry, they're subject to randomness.
In a photo from Bouroullec's studio, he leans over a makeshift table on which he's rolled out a thick slab of clay. It's dark; he's holding a kitchen knife – later it will be caked with residue from the material he's using it to carve. To his left is a pile of thin scraps that have been trimmed from the larger whole; the ceramic retains a feeling of paperiness in the finished works. This has something to do with figure and ground, the glazed ceramic forms (marked with cracks, bubbles, and the traces of tools) buoyed by contrast with the flatness and sharpness of the synthetic surface on which they've been arranged. The sense of découpage – careful composition with paper cutouts – goes deeper than the formal similarity with Bouroullec's earlier drawings and design.
Bouroullec has other precursors. Artists longing for new alphabets in abstraction, or those preoccupied with simple forms and chance operations. At its core, though, this work seems to carry out an older project – the Suprematist project of Kazimir Malevich. In Malevich's manifesto on Suprematism, Malevich writes of "a 'desert,' where nothing is real except feeling." Malevich believed that he had discovered the grammar of this non-objective world. Bouroullec has re-discovered it – and renewed it for our time. This is why the works seem to have a primal resonance. They short circuit our hard-wired symbolic understanding, whisper of other landscapes. They remind us that mass and atmosphere are forms of pleasure, and ask us to be pleased. 
Josh Ascherman
New redesigned edition (May 2022).
Since the beginning of the 2000s, Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec (born in 1971 & 1976) are considered to be amongst the best representative of French design's dynamism and creativity.
Born in Quimper (Brittany) in 1971, Ronan Bouroullec studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et des Métiers d'Art. In 1996, his Vase Soliflore took its place in the Centre Pompidou's permanent collection. Giulio Cappellini noticed his work at the Paris Salon du Meuble in 1997, giving him the opportunity to create his first pieces of industrial design, and he was awarded the Grand Prix du Design by the City of Paris.
Shortly after, he was joined by his brother Erwan and they began ongoing partnerships with international design brands around the world which are still going today. Ronan Bouroullec set up his Paris-based design studio with his younger brother, Erwan, in '99. For over two decades, the internationally acclaimed duo have co-created iconic designs for the likes of Vitra, Hay, Flos, Cassina, Ligne Roset, Magis, Mutina Established & Sons and Kvadrat. Their designs are held in some of the world's most coveted permanent collections, exhibitions have been devoted to their work, and monographs have been published, cataloguing some of their outstanding creations.          
Alongside their joint recognition, Ronan Bouroullec's drawings have been featured in many solo exhibitions including Giorgio Mastinu Fine Art (Venice, 2018), Galerie kreo, (Paris, 2019), Licht Gallery (Tokyo, 2021) and Casa Mutina (Milan, 2021-2022), as well as group exhibitions such as "Objects of Desire - Surrealism and Design 1924-Today", (Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany, 2019; CaixaForum Barcelona, Spain, 2020; CaixaForum Madrid, Spain, 2020-2021) and "Un printemps incertain, invitation à 40 créateurs", (Museum of Decorative Arts, Paris, 2021). His drawings can be found in a number of major private and international collections, notably the Art Institute of Chicago. Ronan Bouroullec is represented by Galerie kreo, in Paris and London.          
Whilst the Bouroullecs' collaborative designs involve a rigorous and complex process of research and testing, Ronan's personal work offer no interferences, no plans. Drawing—which has been a regular activity since early childhood—occupies an important place in his daily life. Today, his drawings are instinctive and exude freedom.

See also Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec ; Erwan Bouroullec.
 
published in January 2022
no text
19,5 x 25,5 cm (softcover)
24 pages (ill.)
 
14.00
 
ISBN : 978-3-907179-44-4
EAN : 9783907179444
 
in stock
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