on October 20, 2023, on october 20, 2023, i gave a unique performance, which i named rêverie (à l’envers)I gave a unique performance, which I named RÊVERIE (À L’ENVERS) / recently, a program has been distributed to the public before each of my performances / here it is, as well as a video recording of each part of the RÊVERIE (À L’ENVERS) program, and an article written by Chanjoo Park

Rafaël is a performance artist whose work is based on video sound.

He uses a variety of processed sounds, such as everyday noises, to create narrative works with the video medium. His work resembles the process of a researcher in a laboratory.

He deconstructs and reassembles the mediums of sound and video, and uses what exists to create a medium that doesn’t exist.

Sometimes in his performances, everyday objects such as balloons and coffee cups can be found, and through some action by the artist,

these familiar objects become part of the work in an unfamiliar form.

The sound of the cups falling and the balloons flying away with the wind out of them create a sense of wit in the audience that they can laugh off after a moment of tension.

He assembles video, sound, and the artist’s actions together like a puzzle, and then passes them through the unspecified filter of the audience’s reaction to complete the work.

He likes to include narrative elements in his work, but he is also very concerned with the juxtaposition of device and form within the canon of art.

When asked who his favourite artist is, he says all the painters in the world. In every moment of his journey as an artist, he feels the presence and gaze of Nam June Paik, Joseph Beuys, and a few other contemporary mixed-media artists, and he has no idea how many more historical artists loom large behind him.

In that sense, the painter who treads the path of painting is, for him, the bravest of artists.

Rafaël’s work is a delicate chaos played by the free-wheeling haphazardness of his chosen mediums.

All artistic intentions imply a relatively artificial character, an appropriate unnaturalness, but his work is far from it.

His fluxus, unlike that of an experimental object with an explicit purpose, organises itself over time and in response to the viewer.

In this way, the performances that Rafaël creates are the closest to the fundamental form of performance art that Happening’s conceptual basis is based on.

CHANJOO PARK, curator at Platform-L Contemporary Art Center in Seoul

1 WE WILL SEE – RÊVERIE (A L’ENVERS)