Manuel Ruiz Vida, an artist of Spanish origin born in the chilly north in Valenciennes in 1970, is exhibiting at the Depardieu gallery in Nice. Visitors will be surprised by the mediums and themes explored by this plastic artist. Medical x-rays, linoleum, and cardboard are the materials used, and the themes invite us to reflect on a container, a reservoir, or factory fumes. These are rarely used subjects.
In 2005, an article by Olivier Cena in Télérama offered us some insights: “Manuel Ruiz Vida is obsessed with the passing of time and the traces it leaves on things.” We approach his work with a different perspective armed with this understanding. Is the reservoir full or empty, has the paint run? This façade with crumbling walls and windows opening onto emptiness, an attraction to the void or a plunge into nothingness? Manuel approaches painting by asking us the question: What is painting?
It’s up to us to answer, to find a response to his question. Manuel paints what surrounds us but that we do not see, too absorbed in our headlong rush against time without quite knowing where we are going! He illustrates this container, perhaps abandoned along a sidewalk, this building façade, this passage we take every day without noticing its nuances.
Manuel is here to show us, to draw our attention. The passage, the theme is very present in his work, is an invitation to dare to take the step, to enter another universe where dreams have more space. The factory smoke, an opaque cloud, must be surpassed. The painting and its object, said Laurence Boitel. Yes, there is an object, a purpose, a reason, and a message in this artist’s work. Armed with all these insights, visitors will approach this exhibition with a new perspective, a different perception.
Manuel Ruiz Vida: Felt, heard, seen, touched, and one might dare say tasted, a delight for the five senses. An exhibition that during the Christmas and New Year season is a wonderful gift offered to us by the artist and the Depardieu gallery.
Thierry Jan
