François Réau / Dans de solennelles et profondes régions intermédiaires, on voit les grandes étoiles d’une nuit de printemps

A multidisciplinary artist, François Réau (born 1978) articulates his work in large-scale plastic devices, installations and drawings, mental landscape and physical landscape, the immensely large or the unspeakable. His plastic devices or drawings in installation raise the principle of the appearance and disappearance of the figure and motifs, at the very heart of the materials.

Taking the space of the landscape and its processes of transformation as a source of reflection, his work is determined by his questioning of the links between man and nature. The themes of temporality, space and human fragility are all present. Landscapes also evoke travel, a place rich in all possible escapes, a point of departure or the symbol of a journey in progress. He notes that "the landscape is always, in a way, the expression of lack; for the space of the landscape is also the very space of our own desire". The poetic and singular attention he pays to the world is mingled with memories, imbued with reality, imagination and fiction, but also with mystery and spirituality, opening up his plastic objects to interpretations that he hopes will be multiple. In a way, his work is situated in an in-between.

For the exhibition at Galerie 8+4, François Réau has produced a new set of 24 drawings that explore the breakdown of time, from the 24-hour day to the 24 frames of a second in a film... opening up several possible narratives at the heart of his work, between short and longer time. The title of the exhibition, taken from an excerpt of a poem by Rilke, is a reminder of the extent to which poetry allows François Réau to unfold a field in which words open up and shift, touching on things that are universal.