Renold Laurent

Renold Laurent is an artist currently based in Cambridge MA. His dynamic and expressive paintings are rooted in imagined dialogue with his audience and between mixed media, cultural history, the present, and our collective future. His work is characterized by the duality of abstraction and representation, using geometric and natural forms, different textures, and a luminous palette. Laurent has collaborated with several cultural Haitian institutions, and his paintings have been exhibited in Haiti, France, and elsewhere. Most recently, in 2019, he received the Heimark Artist Residence Award from Brown University's Center for the Study of Slavery & Justice.


Artist Statement

Essentially, my subject matter is communication on various levels: whether it’s a dialogue between the materials and the media I choose to work with, an intra-dialogue among the various collections of my oeuvre, or a dialogue with the viewers of my oeuvre. The vehicle of dialogue allows me to put specific concepts such as “memory,” “resistance,” and “spirituality” in conversation with one another, thereby demonstrating how these concepts are not mutually exclusive—how they, in fact, depend on one another.

I use different materials—both conventional an...

Renold began to draw and paint under the direction of his father, Maccène Laurent. But he soon abandoned the primitive art of his beginnings to implement new perspectives.
From the beginning of the 1990s, I was attracted by what remains of the tourist influx in Jacmel and which allowed me to earn some money to meet my basic needs. I was also very drawn to the architecture, the sea, the daily life and the cultural bustle of this city. Music, carnival, rara. Then, from 1995, cultural centers, libraries ...
This is how I began to discover the works of Manet, Cézanne, Monet, Bazille, Daly Kandinsky, Léger, Klee, Pollock, Tiga, Cédor, Lazard ... Starting with my father, they were influenced by me.
Exploration of new techniques into my paintings to finally turn to abstraction as a mode of visual communication.

2019 - Individual Exhibition, “Memory Work” Gallery at the
Center for the Study of Slavery & Justice;
February 15, 2019 - May 10, 2019.

2018 - Individual Exhibition, Mary L. Fifield Gallery at
Bunker Hill Community College; Boston, MA; May
21–July 27.

2017- Group Exhibition, “Haiti aux Grands Voisins,”
organized by Haiti Futur and Haiti Action Artistes;
Paris, France; June 21–25.

2015 - Individual Exhibition at the Brazil/Haiti Cultural
Center; Haiti; April 10–30.

2014 - Individual Exhibition at the Casa del Joven
Creador; San.., Cuba; July 3–12.

2012- Group Exhibition, “Mémoire d’une ville imaginaire,”
Nantes, France; January–February.

2008- Individual Exhibition, Centre d’Art, Port-au-Prince,
Haiti; April 25–May 9.

2006- Individual Exhibition at the French Cultural Center;
Jacmel, Haiti; April 28–May 5.

2005- Group Exhibition, “Tendance de la jeune peinture
haïtienne,” the Haitian Art Museum; Port- au-
Prince, Haiti; May–September.

2002- Group Exhibition at the Watercolor International
...