French contemporary artist makes trip to Glasgow

In the wake of her highly successful exhibition 'The Power Structures, Rituals and Sexuality of the European Shorthand Typists' two years ago, which has travelled all over Europe, French contemporary artist Lili Reynaud-Dewar and her works are returning to Glasgow this autumn.

And she is once again welcomed back to the Mary Mary Gallery on Dixon Street, with a new monochromatic project entitled 'Some objects blackened and a body too'.

Unusually presenting a solo project – her previous show was in collaboration with Moroccan artist Latifa Echakhch, while she frequently works with her mother, artist and actress Mireille Rias – Reynaud-Dewar is here to give the audience another small glimpse into her complex and highly-conceptual world.

It is as if she gives the viewer a symbolic key to the door of her home: the fact that the exhibition takes place in what is essentially a top floor tenement flat cannot be a coincidence. And you, the guest, cannot help but feel drawn in - although simultaneously a little intimidated - invited to step inside and look around this homely yet unfamiliar environment that has all the characteristics of an exhibition studio.

And this is exactly how she wants you to feel. One of the aims that underpins her work is, in fact, to explore the relationship that unfolds between often-opposing elements: the home and studio environments; the private and public spheres; the black and the white; the womb and the world outside; art and the rest of us.

Reynaud-Dewar concentrates on pushing the rules. She constructs her own personal ideology of the gallery space, presenting classical nude female torsos made of polystyrene, or altering common perception by throwing your face in a toilet sink like yet another piece of ready-made postmodernist poetry, or by making everyday items unusable by dirtying them with black make-up. Incidentally, this is the very same black she uses to cover her body with, in the beautiful ritualistic dance within her video installation that harmoniously combines elements of underground culture, reactionary politics, Afrofuturism and Nouvelle Vague Cinema.