ART CITIES:Paris-Rolf Julius & Kevin Rouillard
The exhibition “Rolf Julius / Kevin Rouillard” combines the work of two artists who have never met, but whose practices could share a reflection on landscape and sound. This encounter between two artists is the first exhibition of a series of duo-shows, i.e., a curatorial exercise that is often perceived as difficult, in the mythical first-floor exhibition space of Xippas Paris gallery.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Xippas Gallery Archive
Rolf Julius is known for his sound sculptures, has often integrated situations, especially those he encountered in nature, in the constellations of his works. His fragile and modest constructions reveal the poetry of an abandoned place, of a forest, of a lake, etc. Kevin Rouillard seeks to reconstruct a story from large cans that he would flatten with the use of hammer and then assemble into paintings, keeping traces of the supposedly noisy gestures of their making, like on a page of sheet music. Born in 1939 in Northern Germany, Rolf Julius first followed a classical training in Fine Arts. In the 1970s, he gradually discovered certain contemporary composers (in particular La Monte Young, at festivals and on the radio) and integrated sound into his first photographic pieces in 1975. He then started getting more involved in acoustic performances that he created in very different contexts, outside (in the desert, in trees, on water, on facades of buildings, on window panes, etc.) as well as in closed spaces (galleries, museums, etc.). Rolf Julius’ practice was based on a double approach, at the boundaries of visual art and musical creation. As a sculptor, Rolf Julius was also a fully-fledged musician, creating electro-acoustic compositions, giving concerts and performances where improvisation often played an important part. In the early 1980s, Rolf Julius had already laid the foundations for a body of work in which acoustic space was the priority, constantly looking to create a relationship with the space of the world, and nature. The years 1983-1984 marked a significant moment in the artist’s life. He moved to New York, where he met most of the important artists and composers involved with the experimental avant-garde, namely John Cage, but also Takehisa Kosugi. His work, on returning to Europe, found a new audience. But it was in Japan that his work would be swiftly recognised and given an enthusiastic welcome: the role of void in the artist’s work was akin to this culture. His practice is close to minimal art, insofar that the materials themselves have a meaning; Rolf Julius explained that a piece of iron and a piece of music represented the same thing for him. Born in 1989, Kevin Rouillard as graduated with honors from ENSBA in Paris in 2014. For him, the context is never neutral, it determines the objects’ status, their reception and value. Kevin Rouillard shows his lack of interest for oppositions between true or false, the original and the copy, in a system that creates value for artworks. This may also explain his reluctance to circumscribe his work to postcolonial commitment (despite a maternal link with Cape Verde): he belongs to a generation of artists that has perceived the paradox of being allocated an identity to origins of which they actually have little knowledge. To broach the subject, he therefore finds oblique, non linear strategies, such as this last series. To send products to Cape Verde, expatriates fill barrels because cargo transport isn’t expensive, he says. “Once they arrive, these barrels become doors, wood-burning stoves, brushes, houses. I decided to transform them into twisted shields, used in the formation of Roman soldiers as a collective shell. Like a Trojan horse, the barrels have also become paintings.
Photo: Rolf Julius, Singing, 2000-15, Seven loudspeakers, black pigment, cables, CD player, amplificators Dimensions, variable, © Rolf Julius Estate. Courtesy Rolf Julius Estate & Xippas
Info: Xippas Gallery, 108 Rue Vieille du Temple, Paris, France, Duration: 26/3-12/5/2022, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-13:00 & 14:00-19:00, Sat 10:00-19:00, https://www.xippas.com/
