Paths

Joelle Rapp +Jorge Hernandez:  We came by different paths, geographies and landscapesintersecting with poetry, architecture, political and social events that mark our sensitivity and our times.

   Joëlle  Rapp                               

- Architect, DPLG in 1978. Diploma of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris (Industrial Design Department) in 1976.
- Studies Art and Architecture in New York for 2 years, 1978-80, Lucy Fellow at the Pratt Institute (Master of Architecture). 
  Draws at the Art Student League and paints stimulated by he work of Pollock, de Kooning, Picasso and Jasper Johns.
- Gets deeper involved in painting in Mexico 1980-82, at the Academy of San Carlos, supported by the Mexican Foreign Office.
-Returns to France to paint, lives and works at the Cité Internationale des Arts de Paris, Quai de l'Hôtel de Ville, then in Montmartre, and in 1985 obtains a studio from the Department of Culture in Sucy-en-Brie.
-Works with the notions of code, framework, color, light, movement, body, surface, support, environment.
-Stretches, folds and works the canvas before scattering the color pigments in the flow of the medium. Prefers to make "free structures" for her paintings instead of using the classic grid frames.

1990 Creation in situ of "around Rodin". Partner: the city of Meudon, exhibition of the first phase of the project.  1990-91 Studies of Rodin, study of nudes, gestures and movements. Creating volume with branches and canvas resulting from studying the frescoes in the caves of Lescaux. Drawing on bas-relief made of paper and branches. Work in black and white. 1992-95. Beyond visual and gestural space, introduces contact, energy and reconstruction. Symbiosis between painting, drawing, volume…towards installations. 1995-2005 change of pictorial technique : acrylic on tyvek, more reactive to world events (series Isreal/Palestine, series of 9.11.2001…).

since 2005 creations towards new relations to space and people, with plastic materials.  : Painting=Pigments+Medium /Support  becomes  Art Plastic=Plastic+Plastic/Plastic. -  From surface to space , begins "four hands" sculpture with Jorge Hernandez.  Jorge  Hernandez, Piel Divina       -Bilingual poet, French, Spanish. Autodidacte, works as an editor (spell/fact checking, photo layout, offset printer). Writes, popular theater from 1972-75, traveling from America to Canada to Brazil. -Founding partner of the poetic movement Infra Realiste (Mexico 1975). -Publishes his poems in the magazines: « Pajaro de Calor »,  "Correspondencia Infra", « Traces » (publication of BNF),  Calandria de Tolvaneras». Various literary workshops, lectures and conferences (UNESCO, the Pompidou Center…). Non-fiction and fiction, he inspired the character -Piel Divina- of the novels "Les détectives Sauvages" by Roberto Bolano and the film "Le Stade Aztèque" de Joani Hocqueghem. A bridge between two worlds, he makes the movie "Calle San Luis Potosi with Jacques Kebadian and Joani Hocquenghem (Mexico-France 1989). Journalist for "La Jornada" (Mexico 1979-1982).  Arrives in France in 1982. Is correspondent in France for Notimex from 1982-84. - Degree in Latino-American studies, IHEAL, Sorbonne IV. Solidarity with Indian tribes and fights for their dignity. -Knows foundry techniques from family tradition. Studies and practices these techniques on bronze, molding, patina and soldering on metal. Starts working with wood "in situ" in the forest of Fontainebleau, and with marble in the studio of Alberto Guzman. Between the rain and the rainbow, makes four-hand sculptures out of space and light with Joëlle Rapp since 1992. -1993 alternately works on wood and bronze sculptures. Starting point: Homage to Venus by Lespugue - female and male archetypes in bronze. 2000 series: "Géants du Jardin" ("Garden Giants"), sculptures made of branches and intersecting knots. 2004-2007 homage to Marcel Duchamp, from "Ready Made" to "Already Left" or "thrown out at last", or society seen through objects/sculptures. 2007 homage to Frida Kahlo, sculpture series in wood and brass.  2008 "Les Bois Toqués" ("The Mad Woods") : introduction of sound and acoustics in the sculptures for percussion scores.

2004-5  Junior public school  - France 1%Artistic
work integrated into architecture, base on transparency and light.

2008  Chapingo Autonomous University   - Mexico
“ Art with Roots in the Earth” sculpture in situ on a dead ash tree.      

2009 -2010 Instituto Politecnico Nacional de Mexico - Zacatenco
" Free Lines" sheen and stainless steel ,
" Transparent Memory ". painted metallic wire netting and pixels,
" United Human Beings"  sheen steel,
" Paths to Future", 7 white donkeys, steel structure and cement
           

    

   

 Our work develops following these three axes :

 * A constant work practice that evolves with the materials : concrete - conceptual - virtual.

 * An approach reflecting the social and pictorial context of our times (many collective workshops).

 * The study and conversation beyond language: homage to works that echo and respond/ talk to each other: homage to Fernand Léger, to Samothrace,  Degas, to the overcautious virgin of Rubens , to Anne Lise Stern, to Modigliani's wife, to Marcel Duchamp, ...

With Inquiring minds, eyes wide open, our heart on our sleeves, we see, we live, we transform and we give back our version in colors, shapes, transparencies, gathered objects, that, melted together become the sum total of the visions passing through our eyes/eyeballs