OLIVIER RATSI • THE FALL OF ICARUS

EXHIBITION: 27 JULY - 3 OCTOBER 2024
SPECIAL EVENT: THURSDAY 5 SEPTEMBER 2024 (6PM-9PM)

Echoing the opening of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Olivier Ratsi's first solo exhibition entitled "The Fall of Icarus” opens at the gallery on July 27, with the installation of a monumental light work offering a unique experience of movement and its representation in space.

Olivier Ratsi has been exhibiting all over the world for many years, and while he has built up a solid reputation over the years, it was only after being commissioned a major solo show at the Gaité Lyrique museum in Paris in 2021 that his work really came to the attention of the general public. After a spell at the Denise René gallery, in early 2024 he joined Bigaignon which clearly demonstrated its desire and ambition to enable this major artist to become part of prestigious private and public collections.

For his first solo show at the gallery, Olivier Ratsi presents "The Fall of Icarus”, a work that refers to the myth of Icarus, the adolescent "intoxicated by the daring sensation of flight" who, getting too close to the sun, sees the wax on his wings melt and falls into the sea that has since been called the Icarian Sea. This work is the second in a series of three installations that retrace the different stages of the fall: before, during and after. As Julien Taïb, Olivier Ratsi's producer, describes it: "The Fall of Icarus” is a promise of chaos and entropy, a snapshot of the collapse that is to come, the instant after having been on a par with the gods.

After an initial prototype exhibited in 2023 at the Tignous Contemporary Art Center in Montreuil (near Paris), the walls of our gallery are now home to a finished version. The work, made up of 60 colored tubes suspended five meters above the ground, masterfully decomposes the mythologically-referenced fall. And because it coincidentally takes up the colors of the Olympic rings, it's a nod to this summer period, when culture is also present in Paris! A few one-off sketches punctuate the exhibition, so that collectors and enthusiasts alike can acquire a work by Olivier Ratsi at a more accessible price.

A meeting with Olivier Ratsi will be held on Thursday, September 5, to enable everyone to discover this large-scale installation in the presence of the artist. Finally, the exhibition is part of the 10th edition of the Festival des Traversées du Marais, to be held from September 13 to 15, 2024.

French visual artist born in 1972, Olivier Ratsi posits objective reality, time, space and matter as intangible notions of information. Basing his work on the experience of reality and its representations, as well as on the perception of space, he conceives works that lead viewers to question their own interpretation of reality. During the creative process, Olivier Ratsi uses the anamorphic technique he has developed in the course of his research to deconstruct spatio-temporal reference points. Breaking with objective reality, his creations are not so much intended to trigger emotions or disrupt the senses as to catalyze points of view and cultural and psychological references. In this way, the viewer is in no way deprived of his or her subjective capacity to reconstruct/reconstitute reality, and is invited to take a stand in order to experience the work according to his or her own feelings.

Olivier Ratsi has shown his work in solo and group exhibitions worldwide: Galerie Denise René and Galerie Charlot in Paris, Atsuko Gallery in Tokyo, Puerta Roja in Hong Kong, Odalys in Madrid and Wood Street Galleries in Pittsburgh. His work has been exhibited in museums such as OCT Museum in Shanghai and K11 Art Village in Wuhan, D-Museum in Seoul and the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung. Olivier Ratsi's work is a regular feature at numerous festivals and events in France and abroad, including Elektra, Mutek and the International Digital Arts Biennial in Montreal, Biennale Némo, Mirage, Bains Numériques, L'Ososphère, in France, FIMA in Mexico, LEV in Spain, Signal in the Czech Republic, Sonica in the UK and Slovenia, etc. Olivier Ratsi lives and works in Paris.