Special K
November 16, 2023 — January 13, 2024
Seoul
One night, a thought came to us like an unwelcome visitor.
“I think I’ve lost something.”
“You too?”
“Yeah. But I don’t know what I lost.”
“Actually, so do I.”
This little thought spread like a plague among us over the course of a short night. It was like a phantom pain, where you feel the pain of an organ that doesn’t exist.
We ran out onto the street to find what we had lost, but we couldn’t find anything. Not between buildings where the moonlight melts like sugar, not in the dark and dingy alleyways, not on the trees alongside the streets that gnarled like an old man’s grasping hands. All things shining were already stuffed inside the show window.
“It’s obvious we’ve lost something. Maybe it’s something we never had in the first place.”
Written by Jeon Jakka
Game, web novel, webtoon, animation story writer
Inspired by David Rappeneau
Installation
Work
About
David Rappeneau is a French artist. Those are the only facts he will confirm: his name, citizenry, and occupation. In a time of ever-expanding transparency and dissolving privacy standards, his refusal to participate in interviews, appear at his openings, or participate in person with the art world stands apart from accepted practices of self-promotion. Often referred to as an enigma himself, Rappeneau’s work mirrors this aura of laconic mystique, creating a stark contrast between heavily and carefully worked drawings and an artist impossible to see. His drawings, devoid of explicit language, employ ballpoint pens, fluorescent markers, and acrylic paint to craft distorted yet deeply saturated depictions of enigmatic individuals and cryptic landscapes. His subjects can be grungy youth, absorbed in mundane yet mesmerizing activities, video games, fleeting encounters, conspicuous consumption, or any other quickly achievable means of escape. Rappeneau’s depictions recall surrealism with a documentarian lens, revealing youth culture with the stylized allure reminiscent of graphic novels and anime, with art historical references as far reaching as Mannerism, Albrecht Dürer, and Egon Schiele. Experimenting with perspective and figuration, Rappeneau captures the complexities of youth within an eerie and seductive world. Rappeneau’s provocative artworks offer a glimpse into a dystopian realm where mutated bodies, narcotics, and melancholic longing converge within the embodied celestial creations. David Rappeneau has exhibited with Gladstone Gallery, Brussels; Queer Thoughts; FRAC Corsica; Super Dakota; Galerie Derouillon; Peres Projects; Edward Ressle; Centre d’Art Contemporain La Synagogue de Delme; Galerie Crevecoeur.
