Klemm’s, Berlin
Gwenneth Boelens is concerned with perception, memory and time. She has developed an abstract visual language that attempts to capture fleeting moments and gestures, the physical and metaphysical impressions we leave in space. Originally trained as a photographer, she often uses light, time and various chemical and material processes to suspend and inscribe traces of movement and thought.
Renaud Regnerys’ works comprehend painting as a field full of tension, which on the one hand evokes the confrontation with the history of the medium and the discussion connected to it, and at the same time holds possibilities of (self)assertion and allocation. Connected to this is his interest in dealing with inherited, social conventions, their aesthetic manifestations and psychological questions. His way of working shifts between closed image cycles and serially developed groups of work that are realized either in a merely painted manner or by using various printing techniques and painting materials.
At the core of their joint presentation they put seemingly antagonistic notions of ‘memory’, ‘time’ ‚ ‘elusiveness’ and ‘directness or ‘polarity’. Renaud’s paintings refer to these notions in the fragility and intrinsic doubt of the charcoal line on the white canvas, the contained frame.
For Gwenneth the materialized shapes (shields) are more of a remnant of a possible division between two sides, two bodies. The objects address a notion of exposure and shelter.