Antoine Renard, Trauma Queen, 2024, 3d printed glazed ceramic, metal, 230 x 45 x 45 cm

Antoine Renard »Trauma Queen«

Focus, May 03, 2024

Galerie Nordenhake focus presents the work Trauma Queen by French artist Antoine Renard (born 1984). Renard's research-based practice examines techno-political questions, the economic world order as well as issues of the cyber-sphere.

Trauma Queen developed out of a series of scented sculptures that was first exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo in 2019 and continues to explore Edgar Degas's famous artwork Little Dancer of Fourteen Years (1880). Since its making, the both celebrated and criticized statue of a young girl by Degas has become a symbol of the exploitation of social inequalities, and even more so since details of the sculptor's own misconduct have emerged.

The morbid and witty title, combined with the gruesome aesthetics of Renard's work problematises the subject while, at the same time, the sculpture represents a core example of the artist's exploration of the bodily and humane through his signature medium of 3D-printed ceramic.

In light of recent events in the highest echelons of the creative industries, Trauma Queen might serve as a bridge between times and a totem for what has gone unchanged.

Antoine Renard, born in 1984 in Paris, lives and works between Paris and Lourdes, France. Recent solo exhibition includes Atelier Vortex, Dijon, France, and Fondation MRO, Arles, France (both 2023), Cité des Sciences, Paris, France (2022), Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain, Sète, France, and Saint-Denis, France (both 2021), Very, Berlin, Germany (2019), Komplot, Brussels, Belgium (2018), and Marsèlleria, Milan, Italy (2017). Renard has also featured in group shows such as Fondation Villa Datris, Paris, France, Le Saint André, Monaco, and Artocène, Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, France (all 2023), Musée International de la Parfumerie, Grasse, France, and Fondation Villa Datris, L’isle-sur-la-Sorgue, France (both 2022), Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, and Artemis Fontana, Paris, France (both 2019), Picnic, Basel, Switzerland (2018), and Berlin Biennale 9, Germany (2016).

Antoine Renard is the winner of numerous awards and residencies including Inkubator Innovator fellowship (Germany 2015), Goethe Institut Residency Prague (Czech Republic, 2017), Residence Cheval Noir (with Komplot), Brussels (Belgium, 2018), Occitanie de la villa Médicis prize (2019).