Galerie Louis Gendre

Le Sonneur is an artist based in Paris. In a style that blends street art and contemporary art, he transforms the mundane into poetry. He uses a variety of techniques (installation, photography, drawing, stencil, video, and sculpture). During his urban walks, Le Sonneur places doorbells on strangers’ doors, small red bells that portend intimate or unexpected names like “My Love,” “Her,” “Rabbit,” or “My Heroine.” He also slips anonymous love letters under your doors and into your mailboxes. On the sidewalks, he leaves keys bearing the names of imaginary lovers. Le Sonneur also repurposes hotel door hangers and hangs them on the doors of your apartments or rooms, replacing the usual “Do Not Disturb” or “Make Up the Room” messages with pleas for help or heartfelt cries like “Save Me,” “Kiss Me,” or “Fuck Me.” With his red and black drawings, Le Sonneur slips his indiscreet gaze into keyholes and reveals in a play of Chinese shadows other lives, other stolen moments. He also projects his video scenes in the streets, on blank and dirty walls. He makes imaginary doors and windows appear in the city, his “Fleeting Doors”, ephemeral passages towards the intimate, which open and close to reveal in fragments the lives of strangers and as many characters calling out to passersby. Le Sonneur also fixes in the street metal plaques engraved with “MY LOVE”, “MON AMOUR, 4th floor left, By appointment” and a telephone number that you may be tempted to call. More than the city itself, it is those who live there who are the subject of the Sonneur’s work. With his installations, photographs, videos and drawings, he questions the urban condition and the place of the individual in the city. Between poetry and irony, romanticism and darkness, he questions our relationships with others. He plays on doorsteps, these fine lines between the city and the intimate, between each and everyone. His works speak to us of alienation and freedom, of anonymity and solitude, of hope and intimacy. Over time, the Sonneur tells us about his cities, lived or imagined, cities populated by strangers and unresolved love stories, cities where each door hides its secrets. These are the mysteries that he reveals to us, by diverting the banal and the gestures of everyday life. With a simple doorbell, through the keyhole, with little nothings, in a minimal and singular style, he tells his stories, lets us imagine them.