Renée Levi

Born in 1960 in Istanbul, she lives in Basel (Switzerland).

Trained as an architect, Renée Levi's work involves a broadened and many-faceted conception of abstract painting, which, if the truth be told, she practices in a very concrete way, at the crossroads between sculpture, installation and architecture, paying very special attention to the volumes and problems of space. For the essence of her work consists in altering our perception of the surroundings in which she operates, playing on selected materials, their colour, and the way they are incorporated in the site.

What is your artistic proposition about?

The special charm of the “white cube” of the Girard Gallery does not offer a neutral space. Its texture forces works to get out of themselves and hones our perceptual capacities. Answering Christian Bernard's invitation, I have thus developed a project by imagining large painted openings structuring the exhibition venue. Two very large diptychs will be put face to face, forming a mirror-like volumetric sensation that viewers may have of the place. The imposing format forces the gesture to revel the rhythm of its breathing. I was the first to be surprised by the dimensions of the stretchers . In this case, as in each of my works, I chose a place for fishing, and, like any good amateur angler, prepared my boat. But this is just part of the work. We'll see if the vessel is adequate and above all if you still feel like eating raw fish.
 

"What remains of the painting when it does without the picture object or its substitutes and derivatives?—the wall, the partition, the panel. Otherwise put, the first and last habitat plan. The picture was a moveable synecdoche of this. What remains of colour when it refuses variations of shades and hues, the glaze, the flat tint, the touch and the impasto? — The monadic imprint, such as Toroni has used it as an overall covering, or the single, monochrome line. Through her analytical asceticism, Reneé Levi has thus recently found herself poised before the bareness of just the drawing. But instead of giving up on the interplay of colour, she has indeed confronted the reinvention of a painterly graphic gesture—as if it were a matter of starting painting all over again, based on the drawing ”. (Christian Bernard, Les écheveaux d'Ariane (The Skeins of Ariane), March 2001)