Claude Rutault: Ponctualite

From March 26 to June 26, 2010, the Gallery Guy Ledune/Black Box will expose the last work of the French artist Claude Rutault. This exceptional exhibition for several reasons will include the actualization of the definitions/methods in new postures and associations:

• d/m n° 7, dépendances et indépendances limites 4, from 1974, presents two actualizations face à face d/m 42 and 43 from 1976; one in its literal version, the other interpreting its presentation with the d/m 254 from 1994, toiles contres le mur,

• d/m n°21, figures, from 1975, accompanied by a subtitle… ces toiles qui traversent… associates the d/m 1bis, repeindre, from 1997, the d/m 95 suite et ensuite, from 1978 and the d/m 264 promenades, from 1995,

• or the juxtaposition of the first d/m in 1973, fabrique à l’unité, the last in 1997, the d/m 274, ce qu’il ne faut plus faire,

and will be held on the two stages of space (600m2). The last personal Claude Rutault’s exhibition in Belgium proceeded in January 2003 with the Gallery Guy Ledune. Narrow collaboration with the work of Claude Rutault was established with Guy Ledune since 1979.

"In 1973, when he decides to repaint the walls of his kitchen and a small painting which he had left there by inadvertency, it appears manifest to him that a painting and its wall cohabit in a ratio which is far from being neutral… " (Ghislain Mollet-Vieville, ArtPress n°226-july/august 1997).

The work of Claude Rutault was worked out to leave and around what it calls "definition/method" (d/m or DM) and on the basis of a principle that d/m1, toile à l’unité, 1973, state very clearly: "a fabric tended on a frame painted of the same color that the wall on which it is hung". The corpus of the d/m (numbered up to 274) was published in its entirety under the title "definitions/methods the book in 2000" (editions Flammarion, Paris), and constitutes a sum of statements programming sciences from which the actualization of work is possible.

It is thus about a work on the conditions of production, stating, reception and the perception of work: a painting is initially written. The text contains the statement of a program, unit of data proposing a result to reach, and methods to reach that point without the presence of the artist being necessary. During its actualization work "is dealt with" by its recipient who carries it out while conforming to the regulations of the definition/method.

Claude Rutault
Ponctualite