Mariane Ibrahim to represent Raphaël Barontini in North America
Mariane Ibrahim represents, in North America, Raphaël Barontini, the 2019 recipient of the 2nd Prize of the International Tapestry Prize of Aubusson in France. Raphaël Barontini is a French-based artist whose work is a coalescence of classical painting and contemporary fragments. His subject matter includes classical iconography, colonial history and the visual culture of the French Caribbean rooted in African ancestry. His otherworldly images are strengthened by his multidisciplinary practice, honing in on photographic elements, each piece begins with a digital collage, sourcing imagery from his personal archives or museum collections. Raphaël Barontini layers plural concepts in his backdrop and intentionally assembles digital and analog elements while professing his Dadaist influences. More so, his hybrid collages mirror postcolonial rhetorical questions and criticisms confronting history.
In his oeuvre, Raphael Barontini often uses the term ‘creolisation’ associated with writers and thinkers of the French Caribbean (where Barontini has roots), such as Édouard Glissant and Aimé Césaire and compares his practice to Dadaist Hannah Höch or African-American collagist Romare Bearden.
Flags, banners, pennants, curtains, tapestries – the silkscreened and digitally printed monochromatic images embellished with bold color are layered onto the textiles. Barontini engages with symbolic attributes of fabrics deployed to exalte armorial prowess. The hybrid nature of his work is accentuated with the fluidity of his material, using textile assemblage to preface dichotomic elements and allows space for him to explore spatial installations.
In 2019, Raphaël Barontini was selected by the LVMH Group to join its artist in residence program sponsored by LVMH Métiers d’Art, which will begin in January 2020. Raphaël Barontini will spend six months working with artisans at the Heng Long Leather Tannery in Singapore. Barontini will have access to the production resources of the tannery and will work closely with its local artisans. Raphael Barontini is also represented in Turkey by The Pill and in Spain by Espai Tactel.
The artist, who works and lives in Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris, studied at the Hunter College of Art in New York and at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux arts in Paris, and graduating in 2009.
The artist has exhibited work in galleries and museums throughout the world, including Brazil, France, Haiti, Mali, Morocco, Peru, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. He has also participated in international biennales in Bamako, Casablanca, Lima and Thessaloniki. The artist is currently presenting an institutional solo-exhibition at SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, in Savannah at the on view until January 2020.
