Fabien Castanier Gallery is very excited to present Songs Without Words…, solo exhibition for French artist Rero, open from October 6 to 28, 2018. This is the third solo exhibition for Rero at the gallery and his first in Miami, featuring all new mixed media works and installations.
The title of this exhibition is inspired by “Lieder ohne Worte” a series of short lyrical piano pieces by Romantic German composer Felix Mendelssohn, which were composed at different periods of his life and are grouped in the form of eight collections published between 1830 and 1868. These musical collections are the starting point of this exhibition; when RERO stumbled upon them in Brazil, in the district of Botafogo in Rio de Janeiro. He begins his investigation here, examining his own relationship to music as a plastic artist and whose practice involves the direct confrontation with language and text.
Songs Without Words… presents the artist’s internal conflict concerning the use of words as expression and how the boundaries between different arts are porous. He explores moments when writing invites itself into painting, painting invites itself into music, and music invites itself into plastic art. RERO’s work has always focused on these bridges, as he combines a multitude of mediums and techniques in his practice. For the artist, he believes that creatively one no longer belongs to a single ideology or concept – that the boundaries between styles and forms are fluid, as are the connections between music and spoken word. This exhibition sees Rero positing that “music” is found in all things, whether verbal, literal, or physical, sounds and rhythms abound in every form of artistic expression.
Rero was born in 1983 and studied graphic design at the London College of Communication. His works have been shown in numerous public and private spaces, including Pompidou Center, MAC/VAL, MAC Bogotá, the Caixa Cultural in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Brasilia, the Postal Museum, Musée en Herbe, the Bernard Magrez Institute, the Vasarely Foundation and the Montresso Foundation in Morocco. More recently, his work has been exhibited throughout France, the United States, Germany, Italy and Switzerland. He lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.