For Kevin Rouillard, the context is never neutral, it determines the objects' status, their reception and value. Kevin Rouillard shows his lack of interest for oppositions between true or false, the original and the copy, in a system that creates value for artworks. This may also explain his reluctance to circumscribe his work to postcolonial commitment (despite a maternal link with Cape Verde): he belongs to a generation of artists that has perceived the paradox of being allocated an identity to origins of which they actually have little knowledge. To broach the subject, he therefore finds oblique, non linear strategies, such as this last series. To send products to Cape Verde, expatriates fill barrels because cargo transport isn't expensive, he says. "Once they arrive, these barrels become doors, wood-burning stoves, brushes, houses. I decided to transform them into twisted shields, used in the formation of Roman soldiers as a collective shell. Like a Trojan horse, the barrels have also become paintings.

(extract from Kevin Rouillard : futur fossile, QDA 08/072016, Pedro Morais)

Born in 1989, Kevin Rouillard as graduated with honors from ENSBA in Paris in 2014. He participated to the 60th Salon de Montrouge and to the prize of Villa Emerige (Empiristes) in 2015. The same year, he also won the Foundation François de Hatvany prize. In 2016 his work was included in the exhibition Distopark, at Confort Moderne in Poitiers, and Le Nouveau monde industriel, (curating: Nicolas Bourriaud) at Galleria Continua / Les Moulins. His work has been shown at Les Abattoirs, FRAC Midi-Pyrénées, Toulouse, for the exhibition Autour du Nouveau Réalisme, Les dadas des Daniel. In 2017 : solo shows at l'Assaut de la menuiserie, Saint-Etienne and at The Chimney, New-York, alongside with a group show with Centre d'Art Parc Saint Léger. In 2018, the Junqueira Artists Residency welcomed him in Lisbon, giving rise two solo exhibitions. More recently, following the SAM Art Projects prize received in 2018, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris is hosting its personal exhibition Le Grand Mur in 2020, while the Galerie Thomas Bernard opens, at the same time, its exhibition Soudure et Mayonnaise.

Kevin Rouillard

Born in 1989 in Vendôme
Lives and works in Marseille

EDUCATION

2012-2014
DNSEP, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, jury's congratulations

2011-2012
DNAP, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris

2009-2011
DNAP, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Pau, jury's congratulations

SOLO SHOWS

2021
« Taqale [taqalε] v.t < taq. Accoler, Souder, se Débrouiller », Selebe Yoon, Dakar

2020
Le grand mur, Palais de Tokyo, Paris
Mayonnaise, Galerie Thomas Bernard, Paris

2018
7/7, La Junqueira Artists Residency, Lisbonne, Portugal
Uma Historia de formas quebradas, La Junqueira Artists Residency, Lisbonne, Portugal

2017
Extrait (Tôle, Choc) Contre-attaque, Galerie Thomas Bernard - Cortex Athletico, Paris, France
Extrait (tôle, choc) Barricade, L'Assaut de la menuiserie, Saint-Etienne, France
Collision, The Chimney gallery, New York, USA, with the support of the Culture and Communiction Minister, the Comité Professionel des Galeries d?Art and the Direction Générale de la Création Artistique

2014
Triste entropie, Diplôme DNSEP, Beaux-Arts de Paris, Paris

GROUP SHOWS

2021

RECYCLAGE-SURCYCLAGE, Villa Datris, Paris

Biennale Saint-Paul de Vence, Saint-Paul de Vence

2020
Biennale de Dakar, Dakar (postponed)
RECYCLER/SURCYCLER, Villa Datris, L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue
Memory or Memories, Art & Communictaion, Bordeaux

2019
Masterpieces 2, Galerie Thomas Bernard / Cortex Athletico, Paris
Masterpieces, Galerie Thomas Bernard - Cortex Athletico

2018
Heavy metal, Galerie Jérôme Pauchant, Paris, France
A l'oeuvre, La maison des vins et du tourisme, Fronton, France

2017
FIAC, Galerie Thomas Bernard - Cortex Athletico, Grand Palais, Paris, France
Construire Déconstruire, Delta studio, Roubaix, France
Autour du Nouveau Réalisme, Les dadas des Daniel, Les Abattoirs, FRAC Midi-Pyrénées, Toulouse, France
Agora, collectif 2a1, Galerie R-2, Paris, France
It's Happening!, Espace Claude Parent, Lycée Raoul Follereau, Hors les Murs Centre d'art contemporain du Parc Saint Léger, Nevers, France

2016
Choséité, Galerie Episodique, Paris, France
Le Nouveau monde industriel, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, Galleria Continua / Les Moulins, Boissy-le-Châtel, France
The Future is the Future, Galerie Thomas Bernard - Cortex Athletico, Paris, France - exhibition views HERE
Distopark, Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers

2015
Empiristes, Villa Emerige, Paris
Les voyageurs, exhibition of the jury's congratulated, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris
Etat des Lieux, Galerie Machina, Clichy
Chers objets partie II, Immanence, Paris
Chers objets partie I, Réfectoire des Cordeliers, Paris
Destination mars, le Printemps de l'Art Contemporain, Marseille
60th Salon de Montrouge, Montrouge
A couteux tirés, Friche Belle de Mai, Marseille
Bains Douches, Paris

2014
Yia Art Fair, Galerie Jérôme Pauchant, Le Carreau du Temple, Paris
StartPoint, DOX Center for Contemporary Art, Prague
Iracema, Paris
Matchmaking, Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris, Paris
Bail à céder, former space of Anne Barrault, Paris

2013
Tendresse, Espace des Arts Sans Frontières, Paris
Jardin Ephémère, Saint-Ouen

2012
N'Border, Les Abattoirs, Le bel oridnaire, Billière

2011
Six Feet Under, Pau

WORKSHOP

2017
MAC VAL, Musée d'art contemporain du Val-de-Marne, Vitry-sur-Seine, France (upcoming)

CONFERENCE

2017
Décoloniser l'objet, avec Annabelle Ténèze, Les Abattoirs - Musée d'art contemporain de Toulouse

RESIDENCY

2018
La Juqueira Residency, Lisboa

2015
Astérides, Friche Belle de Mai, Marseille

AWARDS

2018
Award SAM Art Price

2015
Award of the François de Hatvany Foundation

2014
StartPoint Award nomination, Prague

CATALOGUES AND PUBLICATIONS

2015
Empiristes, Villa Emerige
Les Voyageurs, Beaux-Arts Editions, Paris
Catalogue des diplomés 2014, Beaux-Arts Editions, Paris
Chers objets, Beaux-Arts Editions, Paris
Catalogue of the 60th Salon de Montrouge

PUBLIC COLLECTION

Musée d'art moderne et contemporain, Toulouse

Marc-Olivier Wahler and Leslie Veisse, 2014

At first sight, Kevin Rouillard's artistic practice seems to join the one of a collector, or even of an archaeologist. The artist, in fact, incessantly seeks objects that carry similar values, whether it be on a formal or scientific level. He collects them, tirelessly, studies and archives them, of fear that they should disappear into oblivion. He rummages through the pleats of history and searches for the origin of our memory. By doing that, Kevin Rouillard could claim a privileged place in the lineage of artists who since several decades sound our waste, our archives, our relations to objects and underline our constant inclination towards the reification of objects.
But Kevin Rouillard doesn't develop any particular fascination for the object, nor any idealisation. He works, as he says himself, with what he finds, in a completely fortuitous manner, trying, in the wake of Duchamp, to annihilate all selection criteria. The idea of finding prevails. No privileged choices, no hierarchy between a piece and another: the artist's taste is erased and gives to the material all the possibilities to embody its sense of potential, beyond the determination of the artist. The latter aspires to charge it with another presence, which it then takes over. Thus, the object imposes itself, without us being able to decide otherwise. These fragments deliver no evidence of the past, but multiply the writing of histories without endings, destined to be recycled, to be permanently reinvented. If the fortuitous encounter between the artist and the objects seems to slow down all vague desire of reification, the way the measures are taken leaves nothing to coincidence. The overtaking of the collected object is accentuated by the questioning of the museum demonstration devices and of the transformation of the hanging techniques.
It is not an object in itself that captivates the attention but the manner how the object reveals itself. The aesthetic indifference in the act of collecting allows these objects to exist without prejudice and be exhibited without conventions. The prominent bricks serve as presentation pedestals, the frames transform themselves into concrete block walls, the shelves carry only stones, and the coat racks hold fossils. The understanding of the fragment lets itself thus be forgotten, leaving only its presence. The elements are simultaneously blank of all history and agents of a universal history.