Renaud Regnery's artistic process revolves around deliberate choices of grounding materials sourced from mass-production contexts, such as wallpaper and wrapping paper, as well as off-products from printing and industrial processes. These initial imprints, with their distinct patterns, aesthetics, and materiality, serve as psychological and physical stimuli for Regnery to construct subsequent layers in his paintings. Through overpainting or overprinting, he disrupts and replaces existing patterns, creating new, authentic ones.
The decision to use wallpaper as 'material' and products from the 1920s to the present highlights Renaud Regnery's interest that goes beyond mere aesthetics. By designating wallpaper as a standardised and average aesthetic imposed on the masses, the artist pushes the bad taste of tapestry manufacturers to its limits.
This deliberate choice introduces a very concrete and seemingly trivial element from the world. In a strategic move reminiscent of the situationist approach, Regnery disrupts the decorative purposes associated with wallpaper and, by extension, challenges a certain order of the world. Subverting the image from the inside, he creates a sense of airiness, fantasy, and, consequently, freedom. Moreover, Regnery's paintings function as performances of their own materiality and emergence, going beyond the visual surface to engage with social relations, everyday experiences, and our affective habits of vision and desire. ...
