Political and poetical: through the darkness of the industrial invention and for the love of nature.
Ronnie-Habib daydreams throughout the day. He feels like he is always creating paintings in his head. Ronnie-Habib daydreams throughout the day. He feels like he is always creating paintings in his head. His work is retinal and easy to understand. Through his work, he tells visual stories by borrowing cultural elements and individual experiences.
Cooking has helped him learn to paint. Bangladeshi people are very attached to their traditionally spicy dishes. It's part of who they are. His experience of cooking learned in Bangladesh helps him understand the basics of painting in France. Just as he can't reproduce the same taste with every dish, he's not faithful to the same palette with every painting.
The artist is constantly looking for images that best match his mental projection. For this reason, he deep dives into social networks and the internet; he walks through cities to observe humans, animals, and nature and takes photographs that serve as a basis for his work. He focused his practice on oil painting because he enjoys working with this medium, particularly as the result of an oil painting is always unpredictable and mysterious.
Sometimes he’ll find the evidence left behind by humans in the surrounding nature e.g. unimportant artificial objects, plastic wastes, clothes that tell us more about humans than the actual human figures themselves. Carried by this poetic and ethical thinking on the subject of technological progress and its environmental impact, Ronnie-Habib's work is the result of his research into the Anthropocene era and its consequences on the environment.
Ronnie Habib, lives and works in Paris, was born and spent his young age in the heart of downtown Dhaka, a metropolis where Anglo-American culture stands as a dominant presence, coexisting with local cultural traditions. Throughout his youth, he was first captivated by the powerful rhythms of Western music groups, long before becoming familiar with the traditional ‘Baoul’ melodies that resonated in his environment. His art school in Dhaka rigorously followed an academic curriculum influenced by British educational system where he copied European old masters to develop the skill. This is why the artist doesn't feel ashamed to adapt the Occidental painting process to develop his visual language. Originally a ceramist, he discovered the power of oil painting by visiting museums and exhibitions in Paris. Gerhard Richter's exhibition at the Pompidou Center left a profound impact on his mind and gradually he focused on paint.
He obtained a B.F.A from Dhaka University where he studied drawing and ceramics and has a 1st class in Master in Contemporary Art and Creation from the School of Art Pantheon Sorbonne University, in 2017. He was selected as a tutor for screen print studio from 2016 to 2017 while he was studying at Pantheon Sorbonne.
He was the youngest artist selected at the 13th Asian Art Biennale in 2008 and the 18th National Art Exhibition of Bangladesh in 2009.
Ronnie-Habib regularly participates in Art contest and exhibit his works. As a result, he had a chance to exhibit his painting in a group show in the Museum of Varsovie, Poland, and Laureate of ARTENSION price in 2022.