Thibault Laget-Ro

1976, Tokyo. Lives and works in France

The surface of things

With its pastel colours and its flat treatment, Thibault Laget-Ro’s painting seems perfect, at first glance, for translating the carefree attitude and communicating the wonderful happiness of our consumer society. This smooth appearance masks – to reveal it differently – a harsher side of reality.

On the sand of a sunny beach, holidaymakers are lounging or frolicking. The sun, at the edge of the multicoloured umbrellas, gently fries the skins greased with perfumed oil. Everything breathes joie de vivre. When suddenly, in the middle of this conventional image of happiness, exhausted men, women and children who have fled war or misery on makeshift boats arrive from the other side of the horizon. Similarly, underwater, a child who appeared to be frolicking in the waves turns out to be a young migrant drowning, no doubt having fallen from one of the new Medusa rafts venturing across the Mare Nostrum.

The sea clearly does not have the same meaning for everyone, depending on where they were born. This is what Thibault Laget-Ro’s multicoloured canvases seem to say, in a veiled way. For the suave tones he uses, their deceptive cheerfulness, contrast with the subject of the scenes inspired by great photographic reporters. The flat treatment, which banishes all roughness, further accentuates this discrepancy between form and background, style and motif. One does not know who is lying, the subject or the colour, and this paradox adds a note of irony.

Thibault Laget-Ro’s palette and style are not without echoes of pop art and narrative figuration. But his choice is above all based on a reflection on colour and an intention as to the graphic, synthetic way of rendering figures, away from realism and symbolism. In figuration,” argues the painter, “we tend to make a colour and a feeling match to validate an intention, to increase the contrasts to influence the eye, as we do in marketing. For my part, I use colours that do not correspond to the subject’s expectations.

In the same spirit, the portraits presented by Thibault Laget-Ro – portraits of migrants – appear almost faceless. Or at least without personality, without any real identity, the expression being reduced to a few features highlighted by shadow, a few spots of colour, and the posture of the general silhouette. As if guised, or masked, the face here is only an idea of a face. “I am not a committed painter, I am a witness of my time”, says Thibault Laget-Ro. This bias towards neutrality is obviously only a decoy, a mask. The absence of features, or almost, on the faces of the characters conceals an unspeakable chaos: it camouflages the torments of an inner world as much as it eclipses the violence of the outside. The surface veils the depth. And the reflection, which flattens the representation, attenuates its effect.
Jean-Pierre Chambon in Périphériques n°87, January 2019

Thibault Laget-Ro at his studio

Solo exhibitions, selected since 2008

2017
PANORAMA, de l’Exil à L’exode, DRAC Normandy
Lycée Auguste et Louis Lumière Gallery, (Un) différent, La Ciotat
Nathalie Béreau Gallery, Chai Pierre et Bertrand Couly, Mons Suum, Chinon

2016
Couteron Gallery, Paris

2014
Draguignan Museum of Art and History, Normalement, la vie continue…, Draguignan. Curator : Fabrice d’Agosto bacquart

2013
Orangery of the SENATE, Point critique, Paris

2012
Chapel of the Capuchins, Cultural Centre of the City of Aigues Mortes, Liberté ! Libertà ! Libertad !

2011
SwissLife Private Bank Patronage, Place Vendôme, WALLPAPER, Paris

2009
LE FEUVRE Gallery, Quand les corps s’électrisent

2008
Paris Fine Arts Gallery (C.R.O.U.S), Les nages ne crient pas, Paris

Group exhibitions, selection since 2016

2019
Poudres et traits, Nathalie Béreau Gallery, 17 rue des Grands Augustins, Paris, La Semaine des Galeries Parisiennes de l’Estampe et du Dessin
DE VISU, curator: Jonathan Loppin, LE SHED Contemporary Art Center, Rouen, France
OBSERVER, Curator : Anne Beauchemin, Museum of Contemporary Art, Baie Saint Paul, Canada
LA COLLECTION MONTRESSO – Regard sur le portrait, Espace d’art de la fondation Montresso, Maroc
Biennale d’Issy, Musée de la carte à jouer, Issy les Moulineaux, France

2018
Espace Chailloux Art Centre, Fresnes
The Abbaye aux Dames, DE VISU, DRAC Normandie, Caen

2017
Passage de l’art Gallery, DRAC PACA
PyeongChang Biennale 2017, Curator Seong-Youn Kim, South Korea
Bernard Magrez Institut, « Never give up ! », Bordeaux
Chanot Contemporary Art Centre Outside the walls, Winter Exhibition, Clamart

2016
34th symposium of the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Baie de Saint Paul, Curator: Marie Perrault, Canada
Passport to… Beirut, Paris Biennale, Beirut, Lebanon
Galerie DETAIS, La vie de Château, Paris
Art Journey, (In partnership with FRAC PACA and the Yvan Lambert Foundation), Avignon
Florence Prize for Contemporary Art, Paris
Mac Paris, Paris

Various

Awards / Fellowships / Residencies

Residency in Santa Fe, New Mexico
Residency at the Baie Saint Paul Museum of Contemporary Art, Canada
Residency at the MONTRESSO Foundation, Marrakech, Morocco
Winner of the COLAS Foundation Award
HOUDART Prize for Contemporary Art

Training / Education

Master 2 Research, Fine Arts, Arts and International Creation, Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris I, with honours
IHEAP – Paris, Institute of Advanced Studies in Fine Arts
Beaux-Arts de Paris, adult education courses, Jean Marc Thommen Studio and Hubert de Chalvron Studio
DESS Management Sciences – Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris I