Pierre le Riche - In Four Places at Once

About

Pierre le Riche is a South African multidisciplinary artist working across modes of sculpture and installation, widely recognized for his use of textiles and thread. For his recent body of fiber-based work, le Riche creates vivid figurative wall tapestries that center his queer identity while reflecting on the complexities of belonging in a contemporary world.  

Identity is woven into and essential to le Riche’s practice; much of his work has been aimed at challenging norms and associations around gender and sexuality and confronting themes of colonialism and white privilege. The group of artworks on show emerged from a period of internal struggle as le Riche acclimatized to a new environment following his move from Cape Town to Aachen, Germany. In this light, le Riche’s choice of tufted yarn as a material, reminiscent of cozy household textiles, feels fitting to conjure a homesick state of yearning and introspection.  

Le Riche’s use of craft – elsewhere in his practice he also employs embroidery, sewing, and crochet – tosses out outdated notions of gendered art forms. Through his homoerotic content, le Riche pushes back against the conservativeness of a middle-class, suburban upbringing in Post-Apartheid South Africa. His cartoonish nude figures, some sporting exaggerated genitalia, can be read as playfully provocative and unapologetically gay, testing the boundaries of puritanical sensibilities. Simultaneously, his characters are contorted and dislocated in space, imbued with vulnerability, uncertainty, and longing.  

Four drawings included in the exhibition are taken from le Riche’s sketchbook, where his tapestry designs originate. Here, you can sense an artist exploring and refining a new formal language, one of vivid color and bold two-dimensional forms. The drawing ‘In Four Places at Once,’ from which the exhibition takes its title, depicts a figure spliced into multiple abstracted realities, exemplifying the state of mind that inspired le Riche’s new artistic direction.

Please join us at Ronewa Art Projects in Berlin on Thursday, February 15 from 18:00 to 20:00 to celebrate the opening of In Four Places at Once. We’re delighted to announce that the artist will be present at the opening.

Pierre le Riche (b. 1986, Gqeberha) holds a Master of Fine Arts with distinction from the University of Cape Town and has since worked as a full-time artist, curator, and potter. He has exhibited in solo and group shows across South Africa and abroad, participated in international art fairs, including 1-54 in London and AKAA in Paris, and created installations for global brands such as Daimler and Cartier. His large-scale thread installation Rainbow Rooms has been part of traveling exhibitions in the USA and China since 2018.