A dialogue on artistic creation between past and future
Interpretation tracks break temporal linearity and stylistic coherence: each object reveals the threads that link his intimacy to his public figure, his emotions to images, the everyday to the timeless.
While photography has always played an important role in his work as a fashion designer, Maurice Renoma blurs the boundaries between the arts and claims the porosity of the borders between art and life: it produces a cultural event that participates in the reinvention of the retrospective by blurring the cards between reflection and chance, artistic production and need for expression, reality and fiction.
The starting point: the Renoma boutique
Opened on October 23, 1963 at 129bis rue de la Pompe, Paris 16th, it has become over the years a mythical spot of Parisian life. After 60 years, it presents itself as a concept store where photography, scenography, design and fashion mingle.
On the occasion of 23.23, the Renoma boutique is transformed into a real gallery where all times and all art merge: vintage looks and creative looks, photographs and collages, tableware and furniture will be exhibited there. Iconic clothings from Renoma history will adorn the windows.
Le Souplex – the basement of the shop formerly welcoming sewing workshops and the stars’ fitting rooms – becomes a space of immersion and audiovisual interaction.
Maurice’s life, his childhood objects, his first creations, his private videos, his ambitions are in the center of the spotlight, revealing the intimate and familiar side of his personality: we will believe to get into his head.
In these two spaces, on display there is the creative evolution of the artist in these 60 years of revolutions.
The future: the Appart Renoma
The novelty of this last years is the opening of the Appart Renoma. Installed above the historic shop, it is a space dedicated to cultural and artistic encounters.
For 23.23, the Appart presents the artistic collaborations and cultural influences of Maurice Renoma, always sensitive to sharing and mixing. The œuvres FUSIONS and the TRANSGRESSIONS find a place there alongside new tribute pieces to the great artists that Maurice Renoma has met and dressed throughout his career.
FUSIONS
For several years, Maurice Renoma has signed artistic collaborations for the production of œuvres fusion with other visual artists: the latter freely intervene on his photos to take them into their aesthetic universe and thus create hybrid and singular works.
These projects explore the interbreeding between the different artistic mediums, and confirm the support of Maurice Renoma to artists who tackle strong themes, off the beaten track.
Among them: Jef Aérosol, William Bakaimo, François Bard, Jorge Luis Miranda Carracedo, Jace, Famakan Magassa, Carlos Quintana, Enrique Rottenberg, Dominique Zinkpè and Lyzane Potvin, his very last encounter whose unpublished work is exhibited for the first time at the Appart on the occasion of 23.23.
TRANSGRESSIONS
It was in 1963 that the Blazer Renoma made its first appearance. 40 years later, a new artistic proposal ensues and this garment becomes the point of crossing between different languages: fashion and art, architecture and styling, past and present.
The artistic gesture is that of inviting other artists to create a work according to their theme on this famous blazer that helped to enhance Maurice Renoma’s reputation as an avant-garde designer.
Clothing, otherwise uniform, once used in the navy and worn in British colleges, the blazer has become a distinctive sign, to which Maurice Renoma has been able to give a new aura.
The artists were called upon to act at their convenience on textile material, by painting it, folding it, cutting it, dividing it, sewing it, smoothing it, enhancing it with collages or objects, as long as it remains a true work of art.
By diverting the blazer from its social function, artists give it another status, which goes far beyond its self-expressiveness, and acquires a poetic dimension. Among the figures from all over the world who responded: Arnal, Ben, Erro, Klasen, Kuroda, Segui, Villeglé,..
INSPIRATIONS
Many artists have frequented the Renoma boutique, a veritable factory where fashion and the arts have blurred their boundaries since its opening in 1963.
Friends, clients, sources of inspiration: among the names, Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol have particularly marked the life and history of this young creator who was Maurice Renoma at the beginning of his career.
He thus decides, on the occasion of the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the Maison Renoma, to pay tribute to these exceptional encounters through pieces specially designed, and this with the latest technology available: artificial intelligence.
Always listening and experimenting, Maurice Renoma takes advantage once again to scramble the cards of temporal linearity and mix narrative codes, reconciling the past with the future of his artistic career.
RENOMA POP
Renoma embodies Pop Culture in fashion, and welcomes the desires of this new consumer generation of life, visionary and generous.
The colors, the shapes, the patchwork, the desire for freedom, the mixture of arts, the break with the past, the vivacity: it is not just a clothing brand that has become a cultural phenomenon, but an entire movement that uses a new aesthetic to express its identity and its opinions. The Renoma generation.
If Pop Art is willingly provocative, even political, and tends to desacralize the work of art by making it accessible to all, Maurice Renoma also creates his own pop icon: Cristobal, the plastic goldfish that uses the power of the image to embody the critique of materialism and consumerism observed in modern societies.
Colorful, cheerful, accessible and freely consumable during the exhibitions proposed by the artist, its significance matters more than the work itself: he becomes an ambassador of ecology to point out the ravages of plastic pollution linked to overconsumption.
Like photography, video played a central role in the artistic activity of Maurice Renoma, as well as in the expression of his vision of the world. And, even more than his shots, his sequences collect moments of his private, intimate life, far from his public persona.
His camera accompanies him in his formal meetings and informal meetings, his family moments, his travels: although less known, his recordings reveal his raw artistic sensibility, showing a Maurice Renoma who is sometimes unprecedented, emotional and dreamy, provocative and clever.
The installation proposed at the Souplex consists of several immersive pieces around youth, career and private life of the artist. A first part leads the viewer into the daily life of Maurice Renoma: 24 of his private videos lasting an hour each ideally make up a whole day of 24 hours of screenings.
And more, videos to watch by pushing aside blinds, imaginary railway stations and sensory receptors capturing the presence of the public to create a new narrative at each passage: the experience is that of randomly entering the head of Maurice Renoma, in his intimate thoughts.
A SERIES ABOUT
On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of creation from Maurice Renoma, director Nastasja Budjevac was commissioned to design and produce a video series on the artist, in order to tell his life and his career through a new perspective.
Seven episodes have seen the light after 6 months of close and daily observation, research in the private archives, stolen interviews between an artistic meeting and a business meeting. Childhood, journey, fashion, places, history, team, family, art, future of Maurice Renoma: everything is concentrated in these seven capsules full of life and humor, just like its protagonist.
« I wrote and directed this documentary mini-series on Maurice Renoma with the idea of presenting his life in a way that is both intimate and funny. Also, my objective was to reveal his personality without filters, through an original point of view stripped of any pre-concept. At the same time, this audiovisual work also tells about me, me and my own experience with him: getting to know who Maurice is. »
– Nastasja Budjevac
The film about Maurice Renoma will be presented and screened in its entirety continuously during 23.23 at the Appart Renoma from Monday October 23 to Friday November 4, 2023.
PRACTICAL INFO
Boutique Renoma, Appart Renoma and the Souplex
129 bis rue de la Pompe
75116 Paris – France
tuesday – saturday : 10 a.m – 7 p.m
Subway
Station Rue De La Pompe, line 9
Station Victor Hugo, line 2
PHOTO GALLERY
