Romain Blanck

One can recognize in the painting of Romain Blanck (Düsseldorf, 1995) something very familiar, but also something that fails, as with the expression 'false-friend' that warns that you might mistranslate a word because of its formal similarity to our own language. There is an uncertain perception of what is happening in his work, a visual superimposition of pictorial elements reminiscent of a scribble made freehand in a notebook, a zig-zag line to test a pen or a drawing made on the screen of a mobile or tablet.

Romain Blanck reuses for his paintings scribbles, ephemeral and unnoticed lines, forms or automatic drawings that we all make and discard, often with a certain urgency, and that he considers usable. The paintings are at the center of a negotiation between the protocol drawing of the reproduction and the changes that occur during the process, giving rise to numerous marks on the surface, in tension with the cold flatness that appears at first glance. They are paintings that respond to encountered situations, to specific observed lines that the author appropriates but, at the same time, they also respond to the mechanical gestures that we all make, that the artist himself makes on a daily basis. His work studies the idea of translating found elements that he considers suitable, such as royalty-free music. Each intervention on the canvas exists autonomously, thus giving rise to a succession of pictorial acts. This progression does not really tend towards an end but each painting could continue indefinitely. The works are presented more 'stopped' in time than 'finished', which does not mean that they are reworked but rather that they mark a moment of standstill in this process

In his first solo exhibition in Spain, “Oh! Hey! Hi! Hello! Hello!”, the young German artist starts with small pieces of paper he found in a fine arts store and some bookstores where customers can try out the different pens available for sale. The strangers who try them out talk to each other through symbols, drawings, lines or words like “Oh! Hey! Hi! Hello! Hello!”, without knowing with whom or to whom they are addressing their doodles. The result of the randomly superimposed elements are vibrant compositions that she uses as a system of her own to compose her paintings.

By copying gestures made by anonymous people on these test papers, when reconstructed digitally, the duplicated lines on the canvas are necessarily incorrect, due to the choice of tools, the speed of the action and the scale. This makes them a new stroke, albeit similar to the previous one. On the one hand, it seems that the gestures cannot be contained, but on the other hand, the clumsiness seems controlled, making his paintings tense between control and abandonment, leaving blank space for successes and mistakes. Each line, each form, seems at the same time spontaneous and yet they are all meticulously placed, almost too precisely, reproducing something that was so but out of scale.