Rafael Domenech: Flowers Blooming on Acid, curated by Jérôme Sans

In the spirit of avant-garde artists who have continuously reinvented exhibition protocols, Rafael Domenech develops architectural intervention systems combined with editorial gestures—cutting, writing, revising, and disseminating—turning the exhibition into an open organism, a machine for production and circulation.

For his first solo exhibition in Paris, Rafael Domenech reinvents the space of 193 Gallery by structuring the venue with wooden partitions, reminiscent of folding screens, an iconic object in art history. Like suspended and floating canvases, this architectural setup asserts itself as both a work of art and a receptacle for other pieces, which are either hung on these walls or contained within them, like Russian nesting dolls. Defying categories, he overturns traditional exhibition principles and the very status of a work of art.

At once objects and paintings, his book paintings, as he calls them, transform the traditional concept of the pictorial medium into a modular system. By drawing on the world of books and its vocabulary, Domenech disrupts the conventional, frontal relationship one typically has with painting. Here, the canvas is not simply fixed to a wall; it can open and fold, taking the shape of both a book and a surface, inviting the viewer to come closer and discover new fragments, new layers. Whether placed in a library like a book, hung on a wall, or set on a table, his canvases are never static; they evolve, living multiple lives simultaneously.

"Working within a deliberately minimal economy of means, he engages in a reflection on artistic gesture. By using intentionally "simple" materials and facilitating the movement of his works, his approach resonates with today's globalized world—constantly shifting and internationally connected. A builder at heart, and an advocate of an approach that may seem industrial but is entirely handmade, he deconstructs in order to rebuild. Rafael Domenech is thus an artist who invents his own rules, his own operative mode." 

Text by Jérôme Sans, curator of the exhibition