Raymond Hains

Art Brokerage: Raymond Hains French Artist: b. 1926-2005. Raymond Hains seizes every means of expression, making the notion of artistic categories obsolete. This art anticipates the work of young designers, who operate in their own way using all the existing possibilities of expression. He has had an exhibition at the Pompidou Center, & on the giant Piazza Beaubour. The entire body of work of Raymond Hains (Saint-Brieuc, 1926) revolves around a single obsession: an exploration of the world based on language, with all the freedom of action and existence which language allows. In 1947, the artist created his first hypnagogic photographs which, with the help of special filters, enabled him to make a poem by Camille Bryen illegible. Madness plays a fundamental role for Hains, who always relates it with the decadence inherent in the city. The techniques of appropriation which Raymond Hains constantly uses are complex cultural operations, the basis of which lies in the play of language and the laws of the unconscious formulated by psychoanalysis. Following in the tradition of Raymond Roussel and Marcel Duchamp, Hains uses the inexhaustible process of association of ideas in the form of plays on words and other procedures. He constructs a fragmented narrative which allows him to combine the most varying elements and the most distant dimensions. Listings wanted.