CHELSEA 2006-10

Le Rougetel's paintings, photographs, drawings, sculptures and ceramics investigate the subject of the figure in an emotionally explicit, yet seemingly rudimentary, primitive way. Influences include Guston, Dubuffet, Kusama, Picasso, Hirst, Basquiat, Emin and de Kooning. His work often take years from inception to fruition. The meaning of work during this process often remains subliminal but is born out in the deliberate tensions generated by materials. Paintings will be painted out and marker penned; screws are drilled through canvas; ceramics merge with metal and wood and bronze is left deliberately dirty. Humour sits alongside darker matter as beauty and the grotesque collide creating art as aesthetic that plays with the viewer's imagination and psyche. Beyond the figure and aesthetic? Le Rougetel leaves it to you to participate the way that you want to - he was heard ranting the other day:  

'We are animals. It seems clear that even in the 'progressive West' humans remain pretty primitive, regularly devoured by their base instincts. My art is about encountering the primitive nature that resides at the heart of the human condition - I start with my condition and hope that what I make can move on from mere self portraiture to something definable by others. Look the world is really simple isn't it? We seek out sexual partners, belongings, tribal status, money and power in the struggle for survival and success. Power mongers sell new and better solutions to 'the fracas' through more war whilst simultaneously promoting technological progress as saviour and relishing the emancipation offered by religion. Collective generations deceive themselves that one day they might attain utopia. But if you believe in evolution we're doomed, so why not continue fucking, killing and thrilling. We're highly evolved, biological accidents with inflated opinions of our own importance and place in the cosmos. Slave to emotional impulses and programmed to procreate, eat, shit and pleasure ourselves we have a morbid fascination with our own mortality . Yet we remain absurdly optimistic and find creative ways to fill the time. Ahhh.. maybe that's why I'm an artist. The world is abundant with hope, despair, joy and pain. In my work you'll encounter angst, tits, bums, cocks, vaginas, pain, reflection and laughter, and if you find ways to relate to that then I'd be delighted.''