DAMIEN DEROUBAIX, HEADBANGERS BALL - BEARER OF LIGHT STRASBOURG MUSEUM OF MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART 6 APRIL / 25 AUGUST 2019 - Strasbourg.eu
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DAMIEN DEROUBAIX, HEADBANGERS BALL – BEARER OF LIGHT STRASBOURG MUSEUM OF MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART 6 APRIL / 25 AUGUST 2019 Press Relations Museums Communication Department Julie Barth julie.barth@strasbourg.eu tel. 03 3 68 98 74 78 Press kit and visuals downloadable at: www.musees.strasbourg.eu
PRESS KIT
« DAMIEN DEROUBAIX, HEADBANGERS BALL – BEARER OF LIGHT»
STRASBOURG MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM 6 APRIL – 25 AUGUST 2019
1. EXHIBITION PROJECT PAGE 2
2. EXHIBITION TRAIL PAGE 3
3. ARTIST’S LIFE AND WORK PAGE 7
4. PERSONAL EXHIBITIONS AND BIBLIOGRAPHY PAGE 8
5. LENDERS PAGE 11
6. CATALOGUE PAGE 12
7. EDUCATIONAL AND CULTURAL EVENTS PAGE 16
8. PARTNERS PAGE 17
9. VISITOR INFORMATION PAGE 18
10. PRESS VISUALS PAGE 19
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PRESS KIT
« DAMIEN DEROUBAIX, HEADBANGERS BALL – BEARER OF LIGHT»
STRASBOURG MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM 6 APRIL – 25 AUGUST 2019
1. Exhibition Project
The exhibition "Headbangers Ball – Bearer of Light " traces an initiatory voyage into the world of
Damien Deroubaix. Just as the artist moves with ease and technical virtuosity from one medium
to another, the guidelines to this vast unfolding between light and dark are to be found in the
themes of alchemy, shamanism, the lure of the supernatural and the permeable interface
between reality and dream.
Made up of 45 or so works (paintings, sculptures, engravings, installations and drawings), this
exhibition is an opportunity to discover works being presented to the public for the first time,
works illustrating the dialogue engaged between Deroubaix and painters from the past (
Picasso, Van Gogh, Munch, Goya, Géricault ...). Also displayed are pieces rarely seen, such as
Homo Bulla, a veritable technical tour de force and visual enigma, the result of more than a year
of research by the artist and the master glass blowers of the Meisenthal International Glass Art
Centre (CIAV). The visitor will also be caught up in the feral nature of whole walls occupied by
woodcuts and sculptures carved directly in wood. Plunging into cavelike darkness, he is then
afforded a passage into another world, accompanied by totems, fetishes and subterranean
creatures. Finally light returns to reveal a vast space bringing together monumental installations
and the artist's largest painted formats. Not only as material and matrix for the engraved work,
but also in the iconographic motif of the tree, wood occupies the entire exhibition.
An artist trained in Saint-Etienne and Karlsruhe, a Germanophile and German speaker, Damien
Deroubaix (born in Lille in 1972) works today in Meisenthal and Paris. A painter and engraver,
Deroubaix also creates installations based on the themes that structure his work. These include
his chosen artistic references (The Dance of Death, Dada, John Heartfield photomontages,
Hieronymus Bosch, Picasso, etc.) and borrowings, particularly from the 'grindcore' aesthetic.
Nurtured by musical and cinematographic culture, possessed by mental images that sometimes
meet in violent collisions, Deroubaix has for several years been exploring the field of the
indigenous arts, witness the recurring fetishes in his large paintings, their aura constantly
gaining in esoteric power.
Exhibition Curator: Julie Gandini, curator at MAMCS
This exhibition is being held in partnership with the Saint-Etienne Museum of Modern and
Contemporary Art, MAMC + and with the support of In Situ Gallery - Fabienne Leclerc, Paris and
Nosbaum Reding, Luxembourg.
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PRESS KIT
« DAMIEN DEROUBAIX, HEADBANGERS BALL – BEARER OF LIGHT»
STRASBOURG MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM 6 APRIL – 25 AUGUST 2019
2. Exhibition Trail
Headbangers Ball – Bearer of Light is a title that summarises the fundamental duality at the
centre of Deroubaix's work, between destruction and rebirth. Headbangers Ball, the work that
gives the exhibition its title, is a hypnotic and fascinating painting evoking the jerky, repetitive
head shaking of metal music fans known as 'headbangers'. Yet aside from this feral frenzy,
Deroubaix's work also has a luminous quality that, while at times uncertain and flickering, can
serve to unveil the world's contradictions. "Painting is like getting soda in your eyes: it allows you
to look again and see the world 1. »
Room 1. Metamorphoses
The first room in the trail immediately confronts us with Deroubaix's most recent output. The
major themes of painting pervade the works created in 2017 and 2018: the Muse, the nude, the
primitive idol, the Artist, Nature and its curiosities, the impulses of Life and Death.
Tree, La Pisseuse and Wunder der Natur, 2017-2018
Oils on canvas
In Deroubaix’s most recent paintings, a similar twilight landscape reappears from one canvas to
another. The scene consists of a few trees, sometimes accompanied by plants or other natural
features, mushrooms, flowers, herbs, thistles, shells, often with a low horizon revealing an
ambivalent sky at the twilight hour. This landscape is a backdrop, a stage on which different
scenarios are enacted, depending on the characters peopling it and its varying sets and lighting
effects. Wunder der Natur is a work juxtaposing different emblems: the tree of knowledge, a
nail fetish, an eye and a bat. These motifs stand out against the stormy background of a
spectral sky, staging the meeting between two crescents of the moon, a rainbow and rain that
seems to fertilize the earth like nourishing manna. La Pisseuse is a painting of a landscape with
hills and a tree, at the foot of which we can see the lower part of a female body urinating. The
crouching posture revealing the female anatomy epitomizes a motif traversing art history from
Rembrandt to Picasso. Here its re-use suggests fascination with a universal feminine power,
fecundating the earth and, through its vital power, reconciling all natural elements.
Cavalières (Horsewomen), 2018
Oil on canvas
Cavalières presents two female nudes, winged like angels and climbing on to the back of a
horse painted in a surprisingly foreshortened perspective. One of the two women is seen from
behind presenting her squatting rear, while the other, one leg outstretched and flexed, prepares
to join her companion. The figures embody the angels of good and evil, the second wearing a
red mask. The scene floats in the twilight tones of a hazy landscape and the general
atmosphere is dreamlike.
Mutti, Spring, Idol, 2018
Oils on canvas
Spring and Idol are two paintings that seem to pay homage to female fertility. The opulent yet
rudimentary forms of the aptly named Idol evoke African statuary or idols venerated in different
cultural and geographical areas. Even more surprising is the idol Spring, its hybrid forms
evoking both a bust and female thighs and a phallic shape with a protruding Nkisi nail fetish.
Mutti presents a flayed, shapeless maternity figure, seemingly barely unearthed or rough-hewn,
frontally imposing its sculptural presence against a sombre background.
Metamorphoses and Fire, 2018
1
Interview with Damien Deroubaix by Markus Pilgram, in Picasso and me, cat. exp., Saint-Paul-de-Vence,
Maeght Foundation, 2014.
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PRESS KIT
« DAMIEN DEROUBAIX, HEADBANGERS BALL – BEARER OF LIGHT»
STRASBOURG MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM 6 APRIL – 25 AUGUST 2019
Oils on canvas
If water is not often represented in the Deroubaix's work, its presence is evoked by creatures
from the depths like this cuttlefish. Using a realistic cuttlefish motif taken from an animal
documentary, the artist composes a surreal atmosphere. Fire is a shimmering and fascinating
work embodying the ultimate transformational element of in the alchemical ritual. The fire and
its vitalist power suggest the idea of a cyclical rebirth.
Room 2: Alchemy
In order to highlight the richness and visual density of the works presented, the exhibition
scenography has been kept deliberately minimalist. However, alternation between bright spaces
and deliberately darker rooms gives rhythm to the visit and embodies the fundamental duality
of the artist's work, between shadow and light. This second room is plunged into a gloom that
presents the precious and fragile Homo Bulla installation as though in a jewel-case.
Homo Bulla, 2011
Blown and engraved glass sculpture on a pedestal
Homo Bulla is the fruit of collaborative work between Deroubaix and the glass craftsmen of the
Meisenthal International Glasswork Centre (Moselle). Standing on a base and rising on two
levels, this transparent sculpture brings together various characteristic elements of the
memento mori: skeletons, bubbles, shells and glassware, symbols of the fragility and futility of
existence. Soap bubbles and glass crucibles are all motifs that belong to the artist's
iconographic vocabulary. This fascinating sculpture is a metaphor for the human condition, solid
but vulnerable. Thanks to the glassmaker breathing life into the molten glass, a solid yet
extremely fragile form takes shape. The danse macabre motifs engraved on the glass by the
artist, also found in his painting and engraving, show closeness and even familiarity with death
and its manifestations. The word "Putrefactio", the title of an engraving from an alchemy
manual 2, is inscribed on one of the glass bubbles. The glass elements resonate with the stills,
glass balloons, settling vessels and crucibles visible in traditional representations of the
alchemist's art. This Large Glass 3 is an enigmatic vanity evoking the fragility of life and the
transience of human presence on earth, unlike the chthonian world symbolized by snakes and
shells, synonymous with permanence and regeneration. This mysterious work, both imposing
and fragile, is located in the sphere of sublimation and transparency.
Room 3: Inside the Painter's Head
The third room is inhabited by monumental heads of painters observing us. These are all self-
portraits of the artist inspired by mental images of Goya, Delacroix, Picasso, danses macabres,
heavy metal etc.
Painter 00 Delacroix
Painter 1 Death
Painter 2 Totentanz
Painter 4 Slayer
Painter 7 Guernica
Painter Pablo
2016-2018
Oils on canvas
Conscious of belonging to a long line of artists, Deroubaix considers himself rather like a
linkman between generations of painters, a link in the chain of the history of painting. The
Painter series works on a principle of unity of composition. This is a monumental head, a
simplified self-portrait of the artist, recognizable by certain details (colour of the eyes, ear-rings),
his forehead studded with images, memories and references imprinted in the painter's psyche.
We recognize Deroubaix's great sources of inspiration, Art History and the presence of the
2 Philosophia Reformata, 1622, Johann-Daniel Mylius, German composer and alchemist .
3 Echoing Duchamp’s Grand Verre or La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même, 1915-1923,
Philadelphia Museum of Art
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« DAMIEN DEROUBAIX, HEADBANGERS BALL – BEARER OF LIGHT»
STRASBOURG MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM 6 APRIL – 25 AUGUST 2019
Muse, as well as more popular forms of culture. This series illustrates metaphorically what is
going on inside the painter's head and the influences that permeate this activity.
Putrefactio, 2017
Blown and engraved glass on stand
In a nod to a tutelary figure of the history of 20th century art, Duchamp and his bottle rack,
Deroubaix delivers his own version of this iconic ready-made, to which he adds bubbles of blown
glass and engraved danses macabres.
Room 4: Feral Nature
Coming halfway through the exhibition, the fourth room is an immersion in the world's darkness
and savagery. Large papers covered with watercolour paint, collages and engraved motifs
exhibit their elliptical language in black and purple tones. The acroterium sculptures and
engraved and inked wood bas-reliefs were specially designed for the exhibition. Visitors will thus
be among the first to experience their striking expressiveness.
Roots, 2009
Acrylic, xylography and collage on paper
This very large black and white format with vibrant shades of grey brings together scattered and
recurrent patterns such as the bulb falling from the ceiling, a motif borrowed from Picasso's
Guernica and faintly illuminating a decaying universe: fragments of the Assyrian horse
sculptures, a decapitated lamassu, fetal Siamese twin skeletons taking root and sinister tree
trunks inhabited by a threatening cobra.
Damage, 2014
Watercolour and collage on paper
Just as in Roots, the visual impact of the work is redoubled by the presence of the title Damage,
its letters resonating like an incantation in the twilight notes of this landscape. The result of
assembling juxtaposed motifs, a hybrid dog with a goat's skull moves between two female
bodies, fragmented and stuck upside down on stakes driven into the ground. A further element
of this desolate scene is another skull, in this case human, placed on a trunk.
Room 5: Between Two Worlds
A passage takes us into the depths of the cave belonging to a creature from the depths of the
earth. After our eyes have become used to the darkness, we discover that it is surrounded by
dreamlike images, fleeting appearances of hybrid 'auxiliary' beings accompanying us on a
journey between the real and the invisible.
Astralis, 2014
Acrylic, ink and watercolour on paper
Ea, 2013
Resin, glass and fibreglass, wood, fabrics
Ea was a deity of Mesopotamian origin of supernatural and ambivalent power. He has a star-
studded moonfish body, a snake head with basil ears, and claws and horns. A demiurge Deity
who is at times beneficial, at times evil, Ea is the master of fresh water, the underworld, magic
and exorcism. His chtonian nature makes him a chosen intermediary to communicate with
invisible forces. Like the other chimeras staged by Deroubaix, Ea participates in a repositioning
of man in the universe. Whether as sculpture, installation, drawing or wood engraving enhanced
with watercolour, Ea embodies Deroubaix's method of working by assembly, juxtaposition and
montage that are both plastic and metaphysical. Here he stands on a base under which are
fixed glass bubbles. Attached to the ceiling above him, like rock drawings made directly on the
walls, is a large sheet of paper with watercolour motifs.
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« DAMIEN DEROUBAIX, HEADBANGERS BALL – BEARER OF LIGHT»
STRASBOURG MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM 6 APRIL – 25 AUGUST 2019
The Artist, 2015
Sueño, 2014
Oils and collages on canvas
In these paintings, nocturnal beings interact with the sculpture of Ea. The bust of the flayed
monkey (The Artist) and the bat (Sueño) are so many silent apparitions born of shapeless
dreams. They contribute to the ghostly blue-tinged, atmosphere of this space inviting us on a
journey through a strange dream world.
Room 6: Panoramic View
In the last room, the largest in the trail, light finally takes precedence over darkness.
Monumental installations are found alongside the artist's largest painted formats. Thus to
complete the picture, the exhibition ends on the paradoxical ambiguity of the world depicted by
Deroubaix, a world where the impulses of life and death, violence and beauty, are intertwined
within the same works.
Light Bearer, 2010
Tree, straps, metal, resin and fibreglass, cables, bulbs, microphones, banknotes, hemp
Light Bearer, the literal meaning of the name "Lucifer", is an assembly made from a gigantic
chestnut tree dismantled into several pieces and reassembled. There are dollars for leaves,
heads and skulls hanging from the branches, children's heads crushed on the ground and a host
of microphones. However, the dried out tree has yet another meaning: it embodies a symbolic
link between the earth and the sky, in alchemical terms, between the visible and the invisible.
The tree is also a living entity, a vector of energy that spreads out and is capable of healing.
My Journey to the Stars, 2011
Watercolour, ink, acrylic and collage on paper
Ride the Wings of Death, 2011
Wood, horse skull, burlap, resin, fibreglass, microphones, trestles, horseshoes
My Journey to the Stars is the story of a fantastic night ride in which a horseman of the
Apocalypse with a fetish head holds the reins and rides through a forest reminiscent of a
concentration camp. In Deroubaix's work, the same iconographic motif travelling from one
medium to another is infinitely metamorphosed and hybridized. With Ride the Wings of Death,
the skeletal horse from the previous large paper has emerged in the third dimension to produce
this impressive composite installation that seems to come straight out of a nightmare.
Headbangers Ball, 2018
Oil and collage on canvas
Headbangers Ball, the exhibition's flagship work, a hypnotic and shimmering canvas, evokes a
frenetic dance, the jerky and repetitive movements of metal music fans called headbangers,
from their characteristic head-shaking. Around the two words of the title, using the name and
graphics of the 1990s MTV metal feature, totemic figures whirl frantically in a sort of trance. We
can recognize Deroubaix's favourite motifs: the bat, the nail fetish, a horse's head taken from
Eugène Delacroix's The Death of Sardanapale, the Pisseuse, Pazuzu, the Siamese twin
skeletons, the bust of a winged woman, flaming torches (logo of the metal group Death).
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« DAMIEN DEROUBAIX, HEADBANGERS BALL – BEARER OF LIGHT»
STRASBOURG MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM 6 APRIL – 25 AUGUST 2019
3. Artist’s Life and Work
Born in Lille in 1972, Deroubaix trained at the Regional School of Fine Arts in Saint-Etienne from
1992 to 1997 (DNSEP diploma). This city was for him the beginning of a rich human and
creative experience and of meetings leading to lasting artistic friendships. In Saint-Etienne he
set up an associative site, the 9bis, federating local talent and exhibiting artists of diverse
horizons until then barely known. He subsequently completed his post-diploma at the Karlsruhe
Akademie in 1998. From 2003, he lived and worked for nearly ten years in Berlin. A German
speaker and Germanophile, he was fascinated by the emulative spirit and dynamism of the
local art scene, returning to France enriched by his German experience in 2012. Today he works
in Meisenthal (Moselle) and Paris, regularly curating new European art exhibitions.
Deroubaix's artistic practice is marked by a wide diversity of forms and techniques: oil painting,
watercolour, engraving and engraved wood panels as well as sculpture and installations. This
formal variety is echoed by the most eclectic sources and references, often cohabiting in an
iconoclastic spirit recalling that of Dada montages. Motifs borrowed from the medieval danse
macabre mingle with tragic events from contemporary history and topical images rub shoulders
with mythology or folklore. The artist inventively combines references to museum art, non-
European cultures and popular culture, advertising, urban graphics, metal music clips and
images found on the Internet.
In recent years, Deroubaix's painting has been displaying astonishing duality, both more
universalist and more intimate. Landscapes suffused with poetry form floating backgrounds,
living trees with innumerable eyes reign over a universe teeming with animal, vegetable and
mineral attributes. Vitality and shamanic power emerge from paintings in which hybrid beings
and totemic figures metamorphose to facilitate gateways between reality, myth and the
invisible. His paintings, openly expressionist, often evoke apocalyptic themes, but they also
reveal the beauties of this world. Often in crepuscular lighting, they summon as vital principles
nature and transformation, birth and death, the intimate and the universal.
Deroubaix today asserts himself as a painter, in collusion with other great painters who have
preceded him and who accompany him every day. "I am in constant dialogue with the artists of
the past. When I'm in a museum, I can feel exactly what was intriguing the artist who did the
work I have in front of me. I understand his way of working and I am convinced that there is a
link that must unite painters with each other. » (Damien Deroubaix)
Total Grind, one of the artist's very first solo exhibitions , took place at the Strasbourg Modern
and Contemporary Art Museum in 2003. In 2009, Deroubaix was nominated for the Marcel
Duchamp Prize. In recent years, he has notably exhibited at the Maeght Foundation in 2014-
2015, at the Mudam in Luxembourg in 2016, at the Picasso Museum in Paris in 2018, or
recently in 2018-2019 at the Saint-Etienne Métropole (MAMC +) Modern and Contemporary Art
Museum, partner of the MAMCS exhibition.
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STRASBOURG MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM 6 APRIL – 25 AUGUST 2019
4. Personal exhibitions and bibliography
2022
Fonds Hélène et Edouard Leclerc pour la culture, Landerneau, FR
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, FR
2019
Kunstmuseum Reutlingen, Reutlingen, "Headbangers Ball - Alte Meister (Komödie) » DE
Headbangers Ball – Alte Meister (Komödie)
Headbangers Ball – Porteur de lumière, Musée d'art moderne et contemporain de Strasbourg,
FR
Fondation Salomon, Annecy
Galerie Nosbaum & Reding Luxembourg
Galerie In Situ-fabienne leclerc Paris
2018
Headbangers Ball, Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain de Saint-Étienne, FR
2017
Hier vloekt men niet, Centre de la Gravure et de l'Image Imprimée, La Louvière, BE
War inside my head, Galerie Jordan-Seydoux, Berlin, DE
2016
Postmortem, Le Creux de l'enfer, Thiers, FR
La Guerre et la Paix, Musée Picasso, Vallauris, FR
Picasso et moi, Mudam, Luxembourg, LU
Musée du dessin et de l’estampe, Gravelines, FR
Modulab, Metz, FR
Galerie Nosbaum & Reding, Luxembourg, FR
2015
L'esprit de notre temps, Musée de l’Abbaye Sainte-Croix, les Sables d’Olonne, FR
Der Geist Unserer Zeit, Kunstverein Dillingen, DE
Galerie municipale Julio Gonzalez, Arcueil, FR
Galerie Nosbaum & Reding, Luxembourg, LU
Item, Paris, FR
Best of part 1, Institut Français, Port Louis, Ile Maurice, FR
2014
Picasso et moi, Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul de Vence, FR
Time goes on, In Situ - fabienne leclerc, Paris, FR
Furies, In Situ Hors les murs, Atelier Rouart, Paris, FR
2013
South of Heaven, Galerie Nosbaum & Reding, Luxembourg, LU
2011
My journey to the stars, Le Parvis, Tarbes + Château de Taurines, Centrès, FR
Der Schlaf der Vernunft, La Chaufferie, Strasbourg, FR
Hit the lights, Galerie Nosbaum & Reding, Luxembourg, LU
Homo Bulla, In Situ - fabienne leclerc, Paris, FR
2010
Die Nacht, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen, CH
Comma19 (Temptation), Bloomberg Space, London, UK
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Damien Deroubaix, Salle Picasso, dans Fantasmagoria, le monde mythique, les Abattoirs,
Toulouse, FR
Die Nacht, Saarlandmuseum Saarbrücken, DE
Die Nacht, Villa Merkel, Esslingen, DE
Sick Bizarre Defaced Creation, In Situ - fabienne leclerc, Paris, FR
Apokalyptische Reiter, URDLA, Villeurbanne, FR
Nosbaum & Reding - Art Contemporain, Luxembourg, LU
Utopia Burns, Filipp Rosbach Galerie, Leipzig, DE
2008
9 bis, St. Etienne, FR (with Assan Smati)
Das grosse Glück, Sima Projekt, Nuremberg, DE
2007
Lord of all Fevers and Plague, In Situ - fabienne leclerc, Paris, FR
Oblivious to evil, Galerie de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Quimper, Quimper, FR
Lucid Fairytale, Le Transpalette, Bourges, FR
World eater, Galerie JBB, Mulhouse, FR
Babylon, Showroom Berlin, Berlin, DE
Die Nacht, o.T. Raum für aktuelle Kunst, Lucerne, CH
Space Invasion, Vienna, AU
2006
Ia iak sakkakh iak sakkakth Ia shaxul Ia kingu ia cthulu ia azbul Ia azabua, Nosbaum & Reding -
Art Contemporain, Luxembourg, LU
Chemical Warfare, Autocenter, Berlin, DE
No system can give the masses the proper social graces (with Manuel Ocampo), atrium of La
Maison Rouge, Paris, FR
Human Waste, In Situ - fabienne leclerc, Paris, FR
Let there be rot (fun in the morgue), Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, DE
Art Basel Statement, In Situ - fabienne leclerc, Bâle, CH
2004
Groupe Laura presents Karl Marx, public space , Tours, FR
Werbung, Nosbaum & Reding - Art Contemporain, Luxembourg, LU
Rheinschau. Art Cologne Projects, Nosbaum & Reding - Art Contemporain, Cologne, DE
Imbiss 2 (avec Kristina Solomoukha), Ecole des Beaux-Arts and Groupe Laura, Tours, FR
Synthetically Revived, Konsortium, Düsseldorf, DE
Catastrophic, Filiale Basel, Basel,CH
2003
Fear factory, In Situ - fabienne leclerc, Paris, FR
nouvelleobjectiviténeuesachlichkeit, Galerie Œil, Forbach, FR
You suffer... but why?, Nouvelle Galerie, Grenoble, FR
Symphonies of Sickness, VKS, Toulouse, FR
Imbiss (with Kristina Solomoukha), La Galerie, Noisy-le-Sec, FR
2002
la voix de son maître, Paris Project room, Paris, FR
Magic Jackpot (with Kristina Solomoukha), Glassbox, Paris, FR
2001
Im Lichthof, Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Karlsruhe, DE
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Bibliography
zMartine Dancer-Mourès, Julie Gandini et Estelle Pietrzyk (dir.), Damien Deroubaix –
Headbangers Ball, exhibition catalogue, Musées d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Saint-
Étienne et de Strasbourg, Éditions des Musées de Strasbourg, 2019
Picasso et moi: Damien Deroubaix, exhibition catalogue, texts Emilie Bouvard, Markus Pilgram,
Laurent Lebon, Enrico Lungh, Mudam Luxembourg, 2016, Mudam éd., Somogy, 2016
Damien Deroubaix: l'esprit de notre temps, exhibition catalogue, texts Gaëlle Rageot-Deshayes,
Didier Ottinger, Anabelle Ténèze, Thibaut de Rutyer, Julie Crenn, Tatyana Franck, Musée de
l'Abbaye Sainte-Croix, Les Sables d'Olonne, éd. Musée de l'Abbaye Sainte-Croix, Les Sables
d'Olonne, 2015
Damien Deroubaix: my journey to the stars, exhibition catalogue, texts by Pascal Pique. Also
published by Abattoirs de Toulouse. Other partners: le Château de Taurines, Centrès and le
Parvis, Tarbes, Ibos, Le Parvis / Centrès, Château de Taurines, Tarbes, Le Parvis 2011
GRIENENBERGER Yann, Homo bulla: Damien Deroubaix, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Meisenthal
: Centre International d'Art Verrier, 2011
MENOU Gwénola, Damien Deroubaix, Der Schlaf der Vernunft, exhibition catalogue, text Isabelle
Schenk-Weiniger, La Chaufferie, Strasbourg, La Chaufferie, 2011
Damien Deroubaix : Die Nacht, exhibition catalogue, text by Andreas Baur, Konrad Bitterli, Ralph
Melcher, Sarrebruck, Saarlandmuseum/ Saint-Gall, Kunstmuseum/ Esslingen am Neckar,
Galerie der Stadt Esslingen, Nüremberg, Verlag fur moderne Kunst 2009
BANAI Nuit, Damien Deroubaix, World Downfall, texts by Nuit Banai and Max Henry, published by
galleries In Situ and Reding, Luxembourg, Nosbaum & Reding, 2008
Das große Glück, exhibition catalogue, Galerie Sima, Nuremberg, Galerie Sima, 2009
AUGE Jean Louis, Hybrides & chimères, la conquête d'un rêve éveillé, exhibition catalogue,
Musée Goya de Castres, Toulouse Castres, Les Abattoirs, 2012
Family jewels, exhibition catalogue, Esslingen am Neckar, Galerie der Stadt Esslingen, Esslingen
am Neckar: Galerien der Stadt/ Villa Merkel, 2009 (collective exhibition)
LAVRADOR Judicaël, Damien Deroubaix: Surgery, exhibition catalogue, Luxembourg,
Alimentation Générale Art Contemporain, Luxembourg, Alimentation Générale, 2004
Concerto pour détraqués, (part. II), exhibition catalogue, published by the galleries In Situ and
Reding, in collaboration with the Düsseldorf Konsortium, Strasbourg, Rhinocéros, 2005
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STRASBOURG MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM 6 APRIL – 25 AUGUST 2019
5. Lenders
FRANCE
• Centre International d'Art Verrier (CIAV), Meisenthal
• Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP), Paris
• Artist's collection
• Private collection, Lyon
• Private collections, Paris
• FRAC Midi Pyrénées Les Abattoirs, Toulouse
• Galerie In Situ – fabienne leclerc, Paris
• Musée National d’Art Moderne/Centre de Création Industrielle, Centre Pompidou, Paris
• MAMCS, Strasbourg
BELGIUM
• Private collection
LUXEMBOURG
• Private collections
• Galerie Nosbaum Reding, Luxembourg
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« DAMIEN DEROUBAIX, HEADBANGERS BALL – BEARER OF LIGHT»
STRASBOURG MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM 6 APRIL – 25 AUGUST 2019
6. Catalogue
Damien Deroubaix. Headbangers Ball
246 x 310 mm
Bound, 176 pages, 110 illustrations
ISBN: 9782351251638
Texts in French, German and English
Editions des Musées de Strasbourg
Diffusion/distribution Volumen / Interforum
Contents
Sublimation
Bearer of Light, Julie Gandini
Metamorphoses
Damien Deroubaix’s Cinema, Estelle Pietrzyk
All-Round View
Interview, Martine Dancer and Damien Deroubaix
Inside the Painter's Head
Carrier of Light, Julie Gandini
After denouncing the excesses of capitalism and the conventions of advertising, Damien
Deroubaix is assuming the role of a carrier of hope in his latest works. Turning away from
forthright demands and ‘orgies of signs’4 in paintings that hurled their rage and revolt at the
face of the world, unfurling to the sounds of heavy metal, death metal and grindcore, 5 his work
is entering a phase of appeasement, yet without losing its dark streak entirely. The urgency and
coarseness of his vitriolic visual vocabulary are slowly vanishing. The desire to ‘provoke and
unsettle’ 6 is giving way to a sense of detachment that introduces an intimate dialogue with the
history of painting, but also an encounter with the cosmos, according to a pantheistic vision and
an expanded conception of art. The artist is turning to a mode of expression inspired by a form
of primitivism in which various motifs – figures of go-betweens, totems and fetishes as well as
natural elements – reappear from one scene to the next. More than ever, the two strands of his
work – the critical and the oneiric – conjoin and merge into a single entity. In certain paintings,
which can be seen as narratives of the Creation as much as of artistic creation, the artist
becomes a demiurge standing at the dawn of a new day where everything must be recreated
anew.
[…] The work of Damien Deroubaix is a cosmogenesis or a story of the Creation, but also an
exploration of the underworld, of underground and celestial worlds where the telluric and cosmic
powers become visible. Through paintings charged with magical potential, the artist calls out to
the viewer. By doing so, he adopts the posture of a shaman-artist who stands at the threshold of
4
Konrad Bitterli, ‘Danse macabre et Terrorizer. L’œuvre de Damien Deroubaix entre tradition picturale et
contemporanéité aiguë’, in Damien Deroubaix. Die Nacht, exh. cat. (Saarbrücken: Saarlandmuseum, 2009).
5 Extreme and radical variant of thrash metal and hardcore punk, characterised by jerky rhythms and chaotic, noisy
sound structures associated with an anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist stance.
6 Thibaut de Ruyter, Synthetically Revived, exh. cat. (Düsseldorf: Konsortium, 2004).
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STRASBOURG MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM 6 APRIL – 25 AUGUST 2019
two worlds, shifting towards a moving universe full of primitive forces, natural elements and
recurring totemic characters, mediators who accompany the crossing from the visible to the
invisible world. In Le Printemps, a man’s head planted with tree ferns is half submerged in
water. It is the same bald head, with large eyes and a zipper stitched on its mouth, that appears
in the Painter series – presumably a kind of allegorical self-portrait. Is this face emerging from
the water or letting itself slide back into the water? This ambiguity is characteristic of
Deroubaix’s most recent works, which suggest and open up perspectives rather than belting out
certainties. The image of the head emerging from the water also evokes birth; it could also be a
metaphor for the psychoanalytic unconscious. In the Painter series, the depicted scenes unfold
on the character’s forehead, imprinting themselves onto the skull and reflecting the artist’s
various sources of inspiration. These different motifs can also be interpreted as visions
unconsciously produced by the psyche. Unlike other men who experience or sense the influence
of invisible forces, the shaman can establish communication with them at will; he is connected
to the natural elements, water or fire – yet another impalpable phenomenon that produces
fusion and energy, a moment of transformation and communication with the hereafter.
The cinema of Damien Deroubaix, Estelle Pietrzyk
Deroubaix shares with other artists a liking for words that are inserted into the work to the
point of becoming a constitutive element. Yet the use he makes of words is not remotely
reminiscent of a Cubist collage or a scribble by Jean-Michel Basquiat. Again, it is rather with
the moving image that he seems to cultivate affinities, utilising and using the word, its
materiality as well as its meaning, until it has been completely hollowed out. Robert
Mitchum’s tattooed knuckles in The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955), for
instance, have more in common with Deroubaix’s art than all the calligrams in the world.
This way of making the image and the word work together, without fear of giving the latter
spectacular importance, is a notable tendency in Deroubaix’s painting, as it is in Jean-Luc
Godard’s cinema. With Godard, the word is there on the wall like a shelf (the word pourquoi,
‘why’, composed from packets of cigarettes in Breathless [1960], the sentence ‘It is
necessary to confront vague ideas . . .’ on the walls of the apartment in The Chinese
[1967]), it fills entire pages and screens (Pierrot le Fou, 1965), it is used in domestic
quarrels via a book cover (A Woman Is a Woman, 1961) or it appears on top of an image
(Histoire(s) du cinéma, 1988–98). In addition to the special attention he devotes to their
design, Deroubaix handles words with ease, even daring the occasional rhyme (‘Exhume to
Consume’) to accompany prophecy or insult. But beyond the effectiveness of the maxims or
refrains proclaimed by his paintings, Deroubaix also uses a parallel, enigmatic language
that springs from his characters’ mouths (or other orifices); many of his creatures extend
into a speech bubble similar to the glass bulbs that form Homo Bulla.
Interview with Damien Deroubaix by Martine Dancer
MD: Let’s get back to your practice. Your rather crude drawings and engravings seem driven
by a sense of urgency, somewhat in the spirit of Die Brücke. 7
DD: That was especially true when I painted on paper. When I started working on large
formats, I would sometimes cut out an element that didn’t fit and glue it on elsewhere,
sometimes even on another painting. Another piece would then replace that fragment. The
work was drying fast so, yes, there was a kind of urgency to it. Before I went to Berlin, my
exhibitions of drawings and collages were big messes, like a teenager’s bedroom. In Berlin,
I concentrated everything in the picture. Painting became the core of my practice. And so
with one layer being added to another, the imperative of speed vanished. Sometimes I
would devote three months to a single painting, even smaller ones. Things started to settle.
My work gained new momentum, more space and scope. The subjects also acquired more
7 Group of German Expressionist artists formed in Dresden in 1905.PRESS KIT
« DAMIEN DEROUBAIX, HEADBANGERS BALL – BEARER OF LIGHT»
STRASBOURG MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM 6 APRIL – 25 AUGUST 2019
depth. I evolved towards a new, more encompassing approach to composition that avoids
scattered patterns that merely sit next to each other.
MD: This crystallisation or condensation, which nevertheless preserves the specificity of
each individual element, stemmed from this new dynamic.
DD: There is now a greater unity in my works and in everything I do. Instead of creating
images in different media and participating in slightly chaotic exhibitions, everything has
become more focused, as in my paintings. Scenes and landscapes have appeared,
contrasting with the frontal arrangements of my earlier works. I had been impressed by one
of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s films in which the actors enter the frame from the side and
present themselves facing the camera before they start to play. During my fourth year at
the Beaux-Arts, I studied Baroque art quite a lot: ‘All the world’s a stage’, as Shakespeare
put it. 8
8 Expression taken from As You Like It by William Shakespeare.PRESS KIT
« DAMIEN DEROUBAIX, HEADBANGERS BALL – BEARER OF LIGHT»
STRASBOURG MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM 6 APRIL – 25 AUGUST 2019
7. Educational and Cultural Events
Visit "An Hour for a Work"
Friday 7 June at 12.30 pm
Headbangers Ball (2018) by Damien Deroubaix
Visit "Time to Meet Up"
Saturday 6 April at 2.30 pm «Two Voices»
With Damien Deroubaix and Jacky Fauster from Meisenthal International Glass Art Centre.
Homo Bulla (2011)
Saturday 25 May at 2.30 pm «Shifts and Metamorphoses»
With Julie Gandini, Exhibition Curator, Curator at MAMCS.
Visit "Seeing the Museums Differently"
Saturday 15 June at 10 am
Tactile tour of exhibition works. For sighted, non-sighted or visually impaired persons.
Encounter
Relaxation sessions, every half hour, with Pierre Capelle, healer and arbologist.
Friday 26th April from 10 am to 12.30 pm and from 2 pm-5 pm "Arbology"
Saturday 27th April, 10 am-12.30 pm and 2 pm-5 pm, "Arbology"
Dance
Sunday 5th May at 3.30 pm "Seating Area"
A performance by Myriam Mihindou and Violaine le Fur conjuring up Damien Deroubaix's
shamanic world view.
6/11 year-olds Workshop
Saturdays 27th April, 4th & 11th May at 2.30 pm, "Night of the Tree"
Activities inspired by Damien Deroubaix's works.
Saturday 25th, Sunday 26 May, 2.30 pm-5.30 pm, «Rock and Animals»
Creating an album. Its graphic and musical world. With Guillaume and Maïa of the Cat Club.
Session will end with mini-concert.
Youth / Adult Workshop
Saturday 11th May 10 am-2 noon «Dark Galleries»
Painting inspired by Damien Deroubaix's world.
Family Workshop. "Small Forms"
Sunday 7 April and 2 June from 2.30 pm to 5 pm «Sleepless Night»
A workshop around the Damien Deroubaix exhibition. Open to all.
Mixed Trail. «Blutch» and «Damien Deroubaix»
Every Sunday from 7 April to 30 June at 11 am.
The trail takes in selected works from the Blutch and Damien Deroubaix exhibitions .
Museums Auditorium
Talk
Thursday 25 April at 7 pm «The Visionary Tree, Artists and Trees»
With Pascal Pique, art historian and founder of the Musée de l’Invisible and Pierre Capelle,
healer and arbologist, author of Sociomytho-logies of the Tree, a Journey between Heaven and
Earth.
at 7 pmPRESS KIT
« DAMIEN DEROUBAIX, HEADBANGERS BALL – BEARER OF LIGHT»
STRASBOURG MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM 6 APRIL – 25 AUGUST 2019
Cinema
Tuesday 7 May at 7 pm, Forbidden Zone by Richard Elfman, 1982, 1h13.
Presented by Eric Peretti, Director of Lausanne Underground Film Festival.
The Hercules family move into their new Californian home. In the cellar they find their way into a
lubricious world populated by absurd characters: a dwarf king, a jealous queen, courtiers in
bikinis and Satan in person.
Tickets: € 6 / € 4.50 reduced
Cinema
Tuesday 28th May at 7 pm, La Notte di San Lorenzo by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, 1982, 1h47.
On the night of San Lorenzo, the sky is full of shooting stars. Cecilia makes a vow to tell
someone she loves about another night of San Lorenzo, 10th August 1944.
Tickets: € 6 / € 4.50 reduced
Concert
Saturday 29th June at 6 pm and 8 pm «Blockheads Live Performance»
Performance by Grindcore group Blockheads.
Tickets: € 7PRESS KIT
« DAMIEN DEROUBAIX, HEADBANGERS BALL – BEARER OF LIGHT»
STRASBOURG MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM 6 APRIL – 25 AUGUST 2019
8. Partners
• This exhibition is being held in partnership with the Saint-Étienne Métropole Museum of
Modern and Contemporary Art (MAMC+)
Information
T. +33 (0)4 77 79 52 52
www.mamc.saint-etienne.fr
mamc@saint-etienne-metropole.fr
• With the partnership of the Reutlingen Kunstmuseum for the exhibition catalogue.
https://www.reutlingen.de/kunstmuseum-reutlingen
• With the support of In Situ Galleries - Fabienne Leclerc, Paris and Nosbaum Reding,
Luxembourg.PRESS KIT
« DAMIEN DEROUBAIX, HEADBANGERS BALL – BEARER OF LIGHT»
STRASBOURG MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM 6 APRIL – 25 AUGUST 2019
9. Visitor Information
Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain (MAMCS)
1 Place Hans-Jean-Arp, Strasbourg
tel. +33 (0)3 68 98 51 55
Opening times: every day except Monday - from 10 am to 6 pm
Closed on 1st January, Good Friday, 1st May, 1st and 11th November and 25th December.
Group Bookings
Special times are reserved for group visits arranged by the museums educational service or
accompanied by guides from the Strasbourg Tourist Office.
Advanced booking is required for group visits of more than 10 people,
tel. 03 68 98 51 54, Monday to Friday from 8:30 am to 12:30 pm (school holiday period: 9 am
to 12 noon).
MAMCS entrance fee: € 7 (reduced rate € 3.50 )
Admission free:
10. visitors under age 18
11. carte Culture card holders
12. Atout Voir card holders
13. Museums Pass Musées card holders
14. Édu’Pass card holders
15. visitors with disabilities
16. students of art, history of art and architecture
17. persons seeking employment
18. recipients of social assistance
19. badge-holding employees of Strasbourg Eurometropolis
Admission free all visitors: 1st Sunday in the month.
1 Day Pass
€ 12 – reduced rate € 6 (access to all the Museums of the City of Strasbourg and to their
temporary exhibitions)
3 Day Pass
€ 18 – reduced rate € 12. (access to all the Museums of the City of Strasbourg and to
their temporary exhibitions)
Museums Pass Musées
1 year - 320 museums : more information on www.museumspass.com
18Damien Deroubaix
Headbangers Ball
Porteur de lumière Demande à adresser à :
Service communication
Des Musées de la Ville de Strasbourg
Musée d’Art moderne et contemporain Julie Barth
6 avril - 25 Août 2019 2 place du Château, Strasbourg
LISTE DES VISUELS TÉLÉCHARGEABLES SUR LE SITE Julie.barth@strasbourg.eu
WWW.MUSÉES.STRASBOURG.EU Tél. + 33 (0)3 68 98 74 78
1. Damien Deroubaix, Wunder der Natur, 2017-2018. 8. Damien Deroubaix, Painter 1 (Death), 2017.
Huile et collage sur toile, 200 x 150 cm Huile et collage sur toile, 200 x 150 cm. Collection de l’artiste, Meisenthal.
Collection privée. Photo : Blaise Adilon © ADAGP Paris 2019 Photo : Blaise Adilon © ADAGP Paris 2019
2. Damien Deroubaix, Sueño, 2014. 9. Damien Deroubaix, Homo Bulla, 2011.
Huile et collage sur toile, 224 x 178 cm. Sculpture en verre sur socle en bois, 230 x 131 x 131 cm.
Collection privée © Rebecca Fanuele © ADAGP Paris 2019 Produit au Centre International d’Art Verrier / Meisenthal, France
avec le soutien du Ministère de la Culture (DRAC Lorraine), du Conseil Régional
3. Damien Deroubaix, Langage, 2018. de Lorraine et de la Communauté de Communes de Pays de Bitche.
Huile et collage sur toile, 37 x 29 cm. Courtesy : galerie In situ - fabienne leclerc, Paris © ADAGP Paris 2019
Collection privée, Paris. Courtesy : galerie In situ - fabienne leclerc,
Paris © ADAGP Paris 2019
4. Damien Deroubaix, The Artist, 2015. 10. Damien Deroubaix, Headbangers ball, 2018.
Huile et collage sur toile, 200 x 150 cm. Huile et collage sur toile, 250 x 380 cm
Collection privée. Courtesy : galerie Nosbaum Reding, Courtesy: Nosbaum Reding, Luxembourg et Galerie In Situ – fabienne leclerc, Paris.
Luxembourg © ADAGP Paris 2019 Photo : Blaise Adilon © ADAGP Paris 2019
5. Damien Deroubaix, My journey to the stars, 2011. 11. Damien Deroubaix, L’Arbre, 2018.
Huile et collage sur toile, 330 x 450 cm Huile et collage sur toile, 200 x 150 cm. Galerie In Situ – fabienne leclerc, Paris.
Collection Durand-Ruel, Strasbourg, MAMCS. Photo : Blaise Adilon © ADAGP Paris 2019
Courtesy : galerie In situ - fabienne leclerc, Paris © ADAGP Paris 2019
6. Damien Deroubaix, Ea, 2013. 12. Damien Deroubaix, Sick bizarre defaced creation, 2009.
Résine, verre et fibre de verre, bois, tissu, 125 x 68 x 187 cm Aquarelle, encre, acrylique, gravure sur bois, papiers découpés et billets de
Courtesy: Nosbaum Reding, Luxembourg © Pauline Guyon / Louis Vuitton. banque, collés sur papier, 320 x 446 cm.
Dans le cadre de l’exposition Astralis, Espace culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris Don de la Société des Amis du Musée national d’art moderne. Projet pour l’art
(2014) © ADAGP Paris 2019 contemporain 2009 en 2009. Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musée national d’art moderne /Centre de création industrielle. © Damien Deroubaix
7. Damien Deroubaix, L’Esprit de notre temps, 2015. Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI.
Huile et collage sur toile, 250 x 440 cm Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Georges Meguerditchian © ADAGP Paris 2019.
Galerie In Situ – fabienne leclerc, Paris © Guy Rebmeister © ADAGP Paris 2019 Service presse / Musées de Strasbourg
13. Damien Deroubaix, Des milliers de doigts dans les poches, 2018.
Huile et collage sur toile, 24 x 32 cm
Courtesy de l’artiste. Photo : Blaise Adilon © ADAGP Paris 2019You can also read
