Damien Deroubaix: en un jour si obscur

Abstract

A recognized figure on the contemporary art scene, Damien Deroubaix has been building a singular, dark and violent work since he was 19, which challenges and denounces, with a plastic vocabulary inspired by both the history of art, punk culture and Metal music, society and the world today (war, social violence, capitalism). The practice of printmaking - intaglio, lithography, wood and linoleum engraving - is fundamental to his work and constitutes the starting point for many of his projects. Dialogue with tutelary figures, his work is crossed with explicit quotations from Dürer, Goya, Gauguin, German expressionists, Picasso. An extremely original and powerful plastic universe, a committed work, which this exhibition and its catalog reflect through a journey in 3 stages - "Where do we come from? », "Chaos, the theater of the world", "Vanities, portrait of the artist as a shaman" - which connects the prints with a narrow selection of paintings and sculptures by the artist to which they are intrinsically linked and a selection works of great masters. Three essays shed light on various aspects of the artist's work: his career as a painter-engraver, his conversation with his tutelary figures, and finally the "rage" which animates him in the face of the ultra-violence of human society. Exhibition in the Mansart gallery, on the Richelieu site, from October 15, 2024 to February 16, 2025.