Gallery Review: Galerie Richard Paris

About the Gallery

Galerie Richard is an international art gallery that specializes in contemporary art, representing emerging and established artists from around the world. The white-cube institution displays painting, sculpture, photography, and new media works. I visited the Paris location in le Marais (they also have a location in New York’s Lower East Side). There were two small exhibitions on display. Here were the highlights:

Contemporary Photographies

Presenting both black-and-white photographs and digital color photographs, this first exhibition featured the work of three artists: Bae Bien-U, Dioniso González, and Olaf Rauh. While there was no specific theme or thread beyond medium, some concepts did come to the forefront.

The depiction of home and domestic spaces was a present concern. Rauh’s work was a visual narrative of a fictitious island named “Paninsula” which featured pixelated images of homes superimposed with semi-transparent images of vegetation.

I particularly liked the digital images by González: futuristic renderings of prototype homes placed in present-day landscapes of the United States. I found his spaceship-like architecture almost uncanny, strangely placed within isolated terrains or covered by graffiti and weeds. His images challenge a common notion of the future as a pristine and streamlined world. González rather shows that existing social and environmental issues such as housing and climate change will not magically disappear, but continue to follow us into the future.

The subtlety between reality and the surreal was also a connecting link between the three artists. Bien-U’s grayscale images of winding trees in South Korea’s Kyung-Ju forest were simultaneously haunting and enchanting. The high winds of the forest actually cause the pines to aggressively twist, seemingly bringing the branches to life. The monochrome palette and hazy atmosphere emphasize the trees’ dreamlike presence.

Masterpieces

The second exhibition on display featured painting as the primary medium. Another group exhibition, the works and intentions were numerous.

Kim Young-Hun’s work was particularly enjoyable: large abstract compositions using ancestral Korean painting techniques to evoke digital screen disturbances—an amalgamation of past and present. The vibrant colors and patterns that dance between static and fluid culminate in a creation that seemingly induces a portal between the physical and digital world.

Also moving were the dramatic paintings by Kiyoshi Nakagami. The chiaroscuro works cleverly use texture to juxtapose light and shadow in a refined yet awe-inspiring manner. The works treat light as a heavenly yet ephemeral energy. A definite nod to the sublime, the tenebrosity of each canvases is disturbed by a concentrated luminescence, hinting at the unknown power of what lies beyond.