Reynald Drouhin

“Sometimes, mischievous children hiding behind bushes leave a banknote on the sidewalk and nimbly pull it away with an invisible string when a surprised passerby dares to try and pick it up. I can easily imagine Reynald Drouhin in this type of exercise. I also imagine him exploring the caves and attics of uncertain rich uncles, searching for a magical treasure. Finally, I imagine him slowly drifting into immense wastelands wondering about the whys and the wherefores of the fate of these piles of objects abandoned by other natives.

In other words, I imagine Reynald Drouhin as someone who grew up too quickly and who has never completely recuperated from his encounter with the local population. The locals from elsewhere glide on the web and it is with them that Reynald tends to practice virtual handgliding. He behaves like a Sunday painter who works without a canvas, without colors or without any particular subject, and who sets up his virtual easel by the road where people walking past stop, stupefied to see images from their own imagination unfold right in front of them. We are dealing here with a painter who contents himself with creating situations allowing others to perform every possible rearrangement, visual cross fertilizing, collages of symbols, of signs, of images…

The Web is great and Datadada is its prophet. For Reynald, in any case, the situation seems clear: since everything and its opposite gravitate and bustle and multiply to infinity within the twists and turns of networks, he might as well dig into the inexhaustible (and sometimes depressing) manna of data in order to construct his visual cathedrals with virtual matchsticks. Beneath the appearance of a lost monk in a library reduced to ashes, Reynald Drouhin, patient, discreet, enduring and clever is even able to produce an art that is cheerful, light, friendly… Precious, isn’t it?” Pierre Bongiovanni (extract from Frags, Publication, 2003, Erba Rennes)