Jonathan Renard
I paint what passes through
— chaos, night, certainty.
A Belgian painter based in Liège, I work between Europe and Latin America. Nine months crossing Brazil, from Rio to the Amazon, shifted my painting: it left the linen of the studio for walls, squares, people.
On canvas as on a wall, I look for the same tipping point — the instant chaos becomes form, when the real transforms. To paint is a way of crossing; to cross, a way of painting.
Exhaust the field of the possible
“O my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the field of the possible.”
Pindar — Pythian Odes, IIIA first solo exhibition bringing together the recent canvases — those of the crossing and those of the return. An attempt to hold together the journey and the studio, the gesture and the silence: to exhaust, not to be exhausted, but to reach the end of what a field — a canvas, a wall, a life — can hold.
Walls as grounds for encounter
Walls as grounds for encounter and transformation — painted at street level, with the people passing by.
France
10 muralsBelgium
03 muralsItaly
04 muralsCrossing Brazil
A series born of ten months of travel, from Rio de Janeiro to the northern Amazon. Between painting, writing, performance and travel journals, this project retraces a crossing as geographical as it is inward.
Crossing
Canvases painted in BrazilJournals
Journal pages, photographs, notes, drawings.
Galeria 195 — Itacaré
Painting in public, in the real time of the gallery — the gesture becomes the work as much as the canvas does. This performance is an integral part of the crossing.
Back in the studio
OngoingThe material brought back from the journey settles in the studio — research, new canvases, writing. The series keeps evolving ...
Upcoming exhibition
Ancestral technology
Shared solitudes
A writing project born of the crossing journals — stories, fragments and studio notes gathered into a first book. Writing is another way of painting. At the crossroads of the essay, the narrative and the travel journal, Solitudes partagées brings together texts written over the years around travel, the relationship to others, crossing and transformation.
For exhibitions, murals, acquisitions & collaborations.
