Galerie Enrico Navarra

Exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show held at the Galerie Enrico Navarra, Paris, and the Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, 1990. Text by Demosthenes Davvetas. With biography and bibliography. Profusely illustrated in color. 

Since 1962, when he filled a flowerpot with cement, declared it art, and quit his gardening job, Jean-Pierre Raynaud has been transforming everyday objects into charged symbols of such universal and fraught human experiences as loneliness, illness, death, nationalism, belief, war, disaster, and belonging. He had his first exhibition in 1964, an installation of his “Psycho-objects” (1964-68), pieces of luggage, photographs of mentally disturbed patients, hospital objects, and his ever-present flowerpots, which evoked the death of Modernism and ferment of contemporary life. With their bold, often primary colors and mass-market references, his sculptures and installations align with Pop art. Among Raynaud’s best-known projects is La Maison (Home) (1968-93), a 25-year endeavor in which he covered every surface of his own home with pristine white, gridded tiles, eventually demolishing the structure and displaying its rubble in hundreds of identical flowerpot