ADELE RENAULT

Adele Renault (b. 1988) was raised in the Belgian Ardennes where her musical family encouraged her to travel and experience the world on her own. At just fourteen she ventured to Venezuela for a semester and then on to Brighton, England for her last two years of high school. During her travels she studied visual arts from classical oil painting to modern spray can graffiti, while experimenting with new media and graphic design. Renault graduated in 2010 from the Académie Royale des Beaux Arts in Brussels. 

Following her instinct and desire to paint, Adele continues to live her vocation all over the world. Through her solo exhibitions, the United States marks a decisive step in her artistic career. The diversity of humanity, avifauna and flora in American cities becomes the fertile ground for her pictorial aspirations. Her interest in people, plants and pigeons stems from the commonality that no matter the city, each can be found in abundance. 

The familiarity of her work makes it immediately relatable. In 2014, for her first US solo show Les Clochards Célestes, Adele painted the homeless and pigeons of the Tenderloin in San Francisco, where the gallery was located. In 2016, after two consecutive trips to Burkina Faso, she showed Les Hommes Intègres, a series of portraits of elderlies whose faces were never photographed, let alone painted. In 2019 with PDP Gallery, Adele presents a series of portraits of the community that surrounded her studio in West Adams, Los Angeles. 

Through her series, Gutter Paradise, started in 2016, Adele has pushed her practice towards a meticulous study of a detail that has in itself become the subject of her work. She forcefully alters an element that might seem banal to make it the main focus of her research.

Painting plants was not an overnight decision. The seed was planted a long time ago, quite literally. As a kid Adele always helped her mum in their large vegetable garden, sometimes a choice, sometimes a chore. Subconsciously she was gathering the information being passed down to her and developing a lifelong affinity for nature. Although Adele lived most of her adult life in large cities... As they say,

“You can take the girl out of the garden, but you cant take the garden out of the girl.”

A natural return to nature which occured during the general reset of the pandemic.