


Les Rallizes Denudes Concert (for the renovation of the Palais de Justice, Paris)
2007
Angela Dufresne's 2007 oil on canvas "Les Rallizes Denudes Concert (for the renovation of the Palais de Justice, Paris)" brings together two seemingly disparate cultural registers, the confrontational noise-rock mystique of the legendary Japanese underground band Les Rallizes Dénudés and the grand civic weight of Parisian institutional architecture, into a single charged pictorial field. Measuring 139.7 by 190.5 centimeters, the work operates at a scale that commands physical presence, inviting the viewer into a densely layered painterly environment where Dufresne's characteristic loose, psychically loaded brushwork generates a sense of simultaneous spectacle and dissolution. The long title functions almost as a conceptual score, framing the image within an unlikely collision of subcultural energy and state-sanctioned space, a friction that has defined much of Dufresne's sustained inquiry into performance, history, and the body. Dufresne, who has earned critical recognition for her expansive approach to figurative painting and her refusal of tidy narrative closure, produces work that draws freely from cinema, music, and literature without ever becoming merely illustrational. This canvas reflects that sensibility fully, channeling the raw, feedback-saturated mythology surrounding Les Rallizes Dénudés into a painted register that feels both documentary and hallucinatory. The painting carries an undeniable atmosphere of event and aftermath, of something witnessed or about to be witnessed, with the surface itself contributing to this temporal ambiguity. The physical condition of the work is consistent with its age and the material ambitions of its making. Areas of thick impasto exhibit very faint, finely patterned craquelure, evidence of the painting's material integrity rather than any structural concern. Scattered small areas of pigment separation are present, and ultraviolet examination reveals fluorescence in select pigments, all findings commensurate with a work of this period and handling history. The canvas is offered unframed, presenting a clean opportunity for the acquiring collector to approach its presentation fresh.
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Overall
- Signed
- Yes
- Location
- Heritage Auctions, Dallas, United States
- Spotted At
- Gallery · Heritage AuctionsView on map
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