In his creations, Renk subjugates space through writing and sign, through a formal language that unfolds within the pigments of his work. His gestures, his name which he incessantly affixes, question the physical materiality of the literary landscapes that take shape. They irretrievably fill the void inherent in words until they give way to painting, to the skies and the climatic moments that inhabit the artist and which he had decided would eventually eclipse the scriptural space.

This all-over spray-on-canvas artistic practice had led him, for his latest series, to take his easel out of the studio and head to the coast of Brittany. Since then, cloud masses have been at the forefront of his pictorial concerns. He encountered them in Arles while looking for a book for his son. This book, The Little Guide to Clouds*, exhaustively describes all the forms they can take, all the meanings they bear.

Since then, they have been the object of his or her undivided attention. The subject, by its multiform nature, its hypersensitivity to light, and its attributes—whether vaporous or condensed down to a droplet—has led the artist to set out in search of a medium capable of embodying their artistic vision.

He will opt for a paper made from crushed stone fragments which, through its resistance to liquids, appeared to him as an ideal medium for this new series, both in the creation of the form and in the intention. When asked by us about his practice, Renk explains that he first draws on the paper with alcohol-based markers, always using his own unique writing process, then, by touching it with a brush dipped in acetone for greater evanescence, he lets the poetic nature of the medium appear in the composition. Attenuating or fully reducing the concentration of the paint thus allows him more lightness, to blur, to mist until seeing a drop of water trickle down a pane of glass during a storm.

Paper Cloud, while rooted in the same passion for the beauty and complexity of natural elements, offers visitors the opportunity to discover a different facet of the artist—a creative departure that reveals both the diversity of her artistic talents and the intimate, ethereal nature of the clouds that gaze down upon us.