Can you tell us a little about yourself and your artistic practice?
I’d like to borrow a quote from Nisargadatta Maharaj to answer your question: “You don’t need to know what you are; you just need to know what you are not.” But if I had to describe my practice and my journey, I’d say that I’m a human being who signs my various works under the pseudonym RERO. I work primarily in public spaces—both natural and urban—because my identity is made up of both, and I try to strike a balance between them in my work, just as I do in my life.
I also particularly enjoy hijacking different media or contexts in order to question them. I intervene in an almost systematic way, which over time has become my way of decoding and digesting the world. This is done using letters written in Verdana font, which I then cross out or connect to question their reading and create a polysemy of interpretations once the words have been installed in situ.
What is your background and how did you get into design?
My first foray into art was through graffiti. There was too great a gap between so-called “classical” art—which seemed inaccessible to me—and contemporary art, which I felt was too elitist. I simply hadn’t studied their respective codes, which would have allowed me to appreciate them. Graffiti offered me a more direct, more immediate access, allowing me to bridge that gap and express myself—without needing to know all its characteristics to derive satisfaction from it.
It allowed me to set more affordable goals. Paradoxically, and despite its prohibition, it offered me a more spontaneous gateway. Experience was enough to build my language and my identity. It was my first love, and the one that gave birth to my desire to interact with reality, to take part in our world. Curiously, I had the feeling that you had to transgress the current codes of art to be able to carry out a creative act. It was as if the art classes at school were out of step with the times, that the way artworks were presented to us was archaic and had little to do with my everyday life. So, naturally, I began to practice graffiti in a very conventional way, reproducing American imagery and style. Alabama Monroe could tell you as much about his disillusionment with the American dream. The more I tried my hand at graffiti, the more I felt I was mimicking an era in New York that no longer existed, and in which I had never even participated. A kind of ghost train I was trying to run behind. It was an illusion, but the energy that came out of this movement gave me my first taste of art and gave birth to this desire to interact with my environment and reality.
In your day-to-day work as an artist, what inspires you? What triggers the creation of a work?
I would simply say words. I use words because they resonate with everyone, you don't need to have studied anything in particular to be moved or repelled by them. They speak to everyone, and everyone can interpret them as they wish, which is also their limit, and that's what interests me about crossing them out. I like to question them, because they take on a whole new meaning in a particular context. I've started systematically crossing out all my messages.
This black line—discreet at first, perhaps because I wasn’t quite comfortable with it—has grown thicker over time, and today it has become my signature, my way of deciphering the world I live in and better interpreting it. I had found my language, my way of deciphering the feelings I had about our times—of trying to reveal the things we don’t see. Above all, this thick line allows me to create a work open to multiple interpretations, rather than confining its meaning to a single reading. It allows me to pose a question to which I don’t necessarily have the answer. It gives passersby or visitors the freedom to ask themselves the question. This negation can be interpreted in several ways. This strikethrough can emphasize the word, much like Jean-Michel Basquiat: “I cross out words so that they are seen more clearly. The fact that they’re crossed out makes you want to read them.”
It can signal a contradiction, an oxymoron, an idea that was true for me at one point but has since evolved, ultimately proving to be completely false—yet one that needed to be expressed visually so that I could recognize this error and mark a break associated with this change. This line questions the notion of self-censorship. An idea that one believes cannot be expressed in a particular context. It allows me to hide behind this barrier to express things I probably wouldn’t have dared to say without it. It helps me take a stand. This strikethrough also warns us against the poison of words, in the vein of Joseph Kosuth or Ben: “One must be wary of words.” This line symbolizes the boundary that must not be crossed, but also the horizon…
Can you explain how you go about creating your work? What are the different stages of creation?
As “formalized”—or even ritualistic—as my creative process may seem, once you’ve found your own way of expressing yourself and articulating your questions about the world, you stick to it; as I said, it’s my way of processing and questioning the times we live in. On the other hand, the source or essence that sparks my work can vary greatly.
My act can be triggered by a particular context, a real or virtual exploration, the encounter of a medium, the meeting of a person, a conversation in the public or private space, a sensation or even a simple word. Borders, like sources, are relatively porous in my mind, and art is everywhere, especially where you least expect it. What links all my interventions, I'd say, is the question of misappropriation and reappropriation. For example, today it's difficult for me to work on a white canvas that's intrinsically designed to hold a painting. My whole approach consists in hijacking contexts, reusing objects and supports to offer them a new interpretation. That's why I work on old books, telephone covers, old newspapers, mailboxes and all kinds of supports such as wood, steel and fabric. I try to reappropriate a medium that already exists and question it through my intervention. To do this, I try to apply in my work a quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who says that perfection is reached, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.