David Rappeneau is a French artist living and working in France. Those are the few facts he will confirm: his name, citizenry, and occupation. In an era of ever-expanding transparency and dissolving privacy standards, Rappeneau's divergence from traditional self-promotion practices transcends into the digital realm. He abstains from participating in interviews, appearing at exhibition openings, or partaking in art world events, instead bolstering his visibility and building an audience through a hyper-present online existence spanning across the social media platforms Instagram, Tumblr, and X (formerly Twitter).
Read MoreRappeneau's work mirrors this aura of laconic mystique, juxtaposing heavily and intricately worked drawings with a cryptic artistic identity. His drawings, devoid of explicit language, employ ballpoint pens, fluorescent markers, and acrylic paint to construct distorted yet intensely saturated depictions of enigmatic individuals and elusive landscapes. Rappeneau's subjects include grungy youth engrossed in mundane yet mesmerizing activities, video games, fleeting encounters, conspicuous consumption, or other means of escape. His depictions recall surrealism with a documentarian lens, revealing youth culture with the stylized allure reminiscent of graphic novels and art historical references as far reaching as Mannerism, Albrecht Dürer, and Egon Schiele. Provocative and compelling, Rappeneau's artworks capture the intricate complexities of his subject's lives through experimental perspectives and figurations where mutated bodies, narcotics, and melancholic yearnings converge within an eerie and seductive world.
Rappeneau's work has been exhibited with Gladstone Gallery; Queer Thoughts; Galerie Crèvecoeur, Paris; FRAC Corsica, Corte, France; Super Dakota, Brussels; Galerie Derouillon, Paris; Peres Projects, Berlin; Edward Ressle, Shanghai; Centre d'Art Contemporain La Synagogue de Delme, France; Marinaro, New York, NY; BFA Boatos Fine Arts, Milan; Misako & Rosen, Tokyo; Foxy Production, New York, NY; Et al., San Francisco, CA; Balice Herling, Paris; Tomorrow Gallery, New York, NY.
Text courtesy Gladstone Gallery.
