Pierre-Lin Renié

Born 16 November 1966 in Sainte-Eulalie. Lives and works in Bordeaux.

“[…] For Pierre-Lin Renié, photography is an activity (in the sense that is not only a theory). He thinks of photography as an image of reality – a reality that photography recreates, as any language would. Making photography and the form it reproduces efficient requires the invention of new rules.

Pierre-Lin Renié creates a body of photographic work that could be qualified as descriptive, with a free approach to subjects that are neither defined by a narrative that constitutes a whole, nor by relationships that could be understood as signs of a hierarchy. The grammar of this collection of works is characterised by the diversity of its registers and a descriptive style that avoids lyrical grandeur and the temptation to over-analyse. Structure is prioritised over evocation in every single way of presenting the work (artist’s book, exhibition, online publication). His overall method relies on paying particular attention to time as if it were the principle of a set of rules, the purpose and utility of which need to be clarified. […]

Pierre-Lin Renié’s photographic work is conceptual, both in its construction and its presentation, and yet it does not produce any theory – its perspective is that of someone who chooses to remain on the sidelines. His activity is defined by his will to describe rather than to explain. While the artist’s way of using images is central to the question of how depiction relates to reality, the precision with which he establishes the rules that underpin his practice guarantees that thought will be exercised.”

Excerpt from a text by Pierre Dourthe, commissioned by Documents d’artistes Nouvelle-Aquitaine (2017).