Artist: Valentin Rilliet

Galerie Peter Kilchmann Zurich presents the second solo exhibition with new works by Swiss painter Valentin Rilliet (b.1996, Geneva, Switzerland, where he lives and works). The artist was previously featured in the group show Three New Positions, featuring emerging artists in 2023, and his first solo exhibition Mountain Stories, in the following year, 2024. The Dream Synopsis is the artist’s first exhibition in Paris.

The exhibition’s title refers to Rilliet’s approach in creating his recent works through a more open, associative, or dreamlike perspective, moving away from the site- and source-specific themes that characterized his previous series. In these new oil paintings and works on paper, the artist opens the narrative field of his practice, playfully creating a unique mythology through which he continues to develop his visual language.

While conceptualizing this new body of work, Rilliet participated in the Swatch Peace Artist Residency in Shanghai, China, for three months. He completed the paintings after returning to Geneva in the spring. This was his second residency in China within one year, after having previously spent six months in Chongqing, Sichuan Province.

Raised in Geneva by a Chinese mother and a Swiss father, Rilliet’s work is deeply informed by a bicultural identity, which he neither simplifies nor resolves but rather uses as a creative and driving tension in his practice.
Educated as a painter in Zurich and London, his visual style reflects influences from Russian-born American artist Sanya Kantarovsky, whose ironic figurations and psychological intensity resonate in Rilliet’s compositions. Additionally, R.B. Kitaj’s narrative approach and fragmented visual storytelling provide a deeper historical anchor for Rilliet’s explorations.

Certain elements from his earlier works remain in the new series. While Rilliet still explores the complex cultural exchange between his Chinese heritage and his upbringing within a Western artistic canon, this time he also indulged in experimenting with culture-specific materials to draw and paint on, incorporating them as narrative agents within the works themselves.

There are nine paintings on canvas and nine works on paper presented in the exhibition. Each piece contains a magic realist vision, uniquely composed and skillfully balanced. Central to each painting is a figure, usually in motion, that animates a distinct scenario. These figures often serve as protagonists within mysterious or ambiguous scenes that obscure the line between memory and imagination.

Rilliet draws from elements of previous works series, expanding on his earlier use of Chinese socialist propaganda pamphlets and the so-called ‘picture books’ (连环画, Lián Huán Huà) as source material. He re-contextualizes fragments from these influences and combines them with landscapes, architectural motifs, and figures observed during his travels in Chin and creates layered compositions rich in metaphor and textures

A particularly experimental aspect of his new series was his use of Tibetan paper, ordered from Lhasa. The paper, thick and durable like ancient scrolls, is traditionally made with a flour that makes it poisonous to insects, preserving it from decay. Rilliet explored this material’s limits, often struggling with its unpredictability. His first attempts saw oil paint or ink bleeding too quickly or spilling across the surface uncontrollably. Yet he welcomed these challenges. He came to appreciate how the material itself began to dictate aspects of the narrative. The unpredictability became part of the process and was an eye-opening experience for the young painter who had previously approached his compositions with greater control while working on widely used materials.

This relinquishing of control and the material-induced improvisation aligns with the free-associated logic underpinning the entire series. It’s a method that invites surprise, allowing the physical properties of the medium to influence the narrative as much as the artist’s own intentions.

Valentin Rilliet (b.1996, Geneva, Switzerland), lives and works in Geneva. In 2023, he graduated from ZHdK with an MFA in Fine Arts and graduated with a BFA in Fine Arts from The Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, UK, in 2020. In 2023 he was awarded the Yvonne-Lang Chardonnens Stiftung, and Pro Helvetia (artist residency in Chongqing, China), and the Swatch Peace Artist Residency. In the fall of 2024 the artist had his first solo show with Galerie Peter Kilchmann. His work has been shown at LINSEED Projects (Shanghai, 2024), Atelier Righini Fries (Zurich, 2024), Espace TOPIC (Geneva, 2024), the Grosse Regionale (Rapperswil, 2023), Galerie Peter Kilchmann (Zurich, 2023), Modern Animals Gallery (Zurich, 2023), Bahay Contemporary (Geneva, 2023), Sonnenstube Offspace (Lugano, 2022). His paintings are included in public and private collections across Switzerland, China, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Among them are Stadt Zurich, Zürcher Kantonalbank, Sammlung der Schweizer Post, The Leir Foundation, and the Royal Collection of the Crown Prince and Princess of Luxembourg.