AEROPLASTICS contemporary takes great pleasure in presenting The Rabus Show, an exhibition/dialogue of works from Leopold, Till, Alex and Renate Rabus.
A Swiss family, full of stories, inspired by the places and the people around them, by their full consciousness of this world (Leopold Rabus, Mon ami Jean Buehler 2008, or further Renate Rabus Mutterglück 1993); but also four artists, markedly individual, developing a particular vision of the new artistic expression (Till Rabus, Nature morte au Poulet 2008 and Alex Rabus l'Areuse 2008).
Leopold Rabus leads us through his own personal universe, often rustic though never idyllic (Veau en train de brouter, 2009): here is painting whose reality is confronted by the interpretation it elicits. A non-existent world but one, nevertheless, we feel to have caught a glimpse of. The work is powerful and disturbing, often tinted with a humour that be taken as black (Personnes derrière une serre, 2009). Subjects approached with grace, but without beating about the bush. A gesture in perpetual motion, even when it's static (Le point d'eau, 2008).
His brother, Till Rabus, depicts the world that appears before our eyes and that we don't see. His urbane and hyperrealistic oeuvre beautifies the most banal refuse (P.E.T., 2008), declassifies genres and calls the validity of our value judgments into question. Precision of touch and quasi-obsessional feel for composition render his figurative work almost abstract (L'Automate à Fleurs, 2009).
And then, the parents complete this non-conformist choir, Alex Rabus, through his meticulous and incensed paintings and sculptures, leads us into questions concerning the future of Mankind and Nature. The vivid colours of his Excès de Vitesse first attract us, but we are held by the rightness of his aim and the adroitness with which its details form the whole.
Renate Rabus, by grace of her unique working of textile and her bittersweet embroidery, allows us privileged access to a different reality. Repas de Famille (2009) gives us a chance to admire this artist's exceptional mastery of technique as much as her intimist vision of the family.
The entire ensemble aims towards the meticulous and the punctual, close to the fundamental values that these four artists share. Something that reminds us that closely held convictions and their modes of expression may be an inter-generational story, one where contemporaneity infuses the breath of life.
