Claude RUTAULT

Perrotin is pleased to present an exhibition at 2bis Avenue Matignon dedicated to claude rutault, who passed away in 2022. The exhibition features six de-finitions/methods (dm) actualized according to the artist’s instructions, including the first and last work from his book definitions/methods 1973-2016.

The window at the gallery entrance features A VENDRE A PEINDRE, a humorous and caustic reflection on the commercial codes of the art world, and an allusion to the exhibition title which derives from a joke in the artist’s family: ici mieux qu’en face (“better here than over there”). To claude rutault, this expression seemed the perfect argument for selling all kinds of
objects.

Inside the gallery, a diptych painted the color of the wall (dm 1 painting per unit, 2013) spells out the artist’s vocabulary, further developed in the horizontal and vertical alignments of the canvases dependence and independence boundaries 3 (1974). A column made of piles of canvases -nicolas ledoux memory (2012) and a humorous evocation of a paso-doble dance duet (1995) complete the gallery space.

Finally, the triangular painting extreme format 4 (1974), to be actualized by 3 people, brings the social implications of Rutault’s work to the fore; they are pushed to the extreme with AMZ (2016), a mobile world-work with more than 100 participants, evolving according to the time and location of the paintings,  represented here by a rectangular painting outlining an absence.

Four prestigious museums are currently paying the artist an exceptional homage. The Musée d’Orsay is showing la porte de la peinture, a work inspired by Auguste Rodin’s La Porte de l’Enfer, while the Musée du Louvre is exhibiting a work by Rutault based on a Fayum painting. The National Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, is displaying ready to be made, actualized with Marcel Duchamp’s Bottle Rack. The Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, finally, is taking part in this homage by adding a work from their collection to the permanent exhibition.