Abstract

Renaud, the illuminator. Renaud, the chronicler. “JXR” is not exactly recording facts and documents, although he often paints on the basis of “found images,” taking digital photos he collects from websites as a basis for his own work. He is not an archivist either, although he uses collage and routinely incorporates pictures or logotypes into his digital drawings. The chronicling work remains. In Renaud’s oeuvre, the times are being shown in all their glorious stupidity. An optimist nevertheless, the artist exhibits through the grotesque dehiscence of the ordinary the raw nature of survival. By his alliance of artistic métier and critical force, of iconoclastic crudeness and reflection on society, of laughter and precision, Renaud’s art is undoubtedly related to that of Honoré Daumier, George Grosz, or Philip Guston. JXR has in common with all three painters that he excels at displaying the ridicule of adventitious grandeur and the vulgarity of the norm.