The Palais de Tokyo and the CAPC Musée d’art contemporain in Bordeaux join forces to unveil and present the cryptic work of RAMMELLZEE, an iconic artist from the 1980s American underground scene. The first large-scale European event, this deliberately enigmatic exploration is conceived in two acts, like the sides of an audio cassette or a vinyl record. Side A, at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), from 21 February to 7 September 2025. Side B at the CAPC (Bordeaux), from 12 March to 20 September 2026.

RAMMELLZEE is not just a name with a divine ring to it, nor merely an enigmatic signature that appeared in New York City in 1979, “It’s an equation to elevation, to detail, to perspective” the artist claimed in a 1985 interview with philosopher and founder of the Semiotext(e) publishing house Sylvère Lotringer. An equation that draws multiple opaque lines: those of the speed of the New York subway, of aeronautics and quantum mechanics, of the heritage of Italian Futurism, and of the toxic qualities of spray paint and resin.

The two-part exhibition “ALPHABETA SIGMA”, conceived in collaboration between the Palais de Tokyo and the CAPC Musée d’art contemporain in Bordeaux, explores the work of American artist RAMMELLZEE (1960-2010) through the substances that shaped it. Rather than taking on the form of a retrospective, or claiming to be exhaustive, it delves into the meanders of a sprawling practice that manifests itself equally in theoretical and poetic writing, painting, sculpture, music, performance, film, costumes and jewelry. These elements that glow under the black light were part of RAMMZELLZEE’s war against language and its violence. A war played out on gallery walls as well as in public and cosmic space.

The exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo focuses on the sensitive surfaces of RAMMELLZEE’s work, while that at the CAPC will attempt an X-ray to analyse what lies beneath. Side A therefore focuses primarily on the materials that make up the artist’s work (writing, paint, spray, resin, black light and textiles), as well as his founding motifs (the letter, the arrow and the mask), which enabled the artist to turn ornament into armament (the artist used the term armamentation).

At the CAPC, Side B intends to establish a constellation of influences and friendships around the practice of RAMMELLZEE (considered as featurings), whose work will be presented through a more condensed selection of works, to better highlight its particularity and situate it in the history of historical and contemporary artistic production.

Like two sides of the same coin, the two exhibitions aim to capture the energy and speed of RAMMELLZEE’s approach, while at the same time treating his works as veritable objects of study – albeit without attempting to “elucidate” their formulas or equations. A mystery that continues to intrigue, in the cinematic sense of the word: RAMMELLZEE is a combination of circumstances and incidents, a sequence of events that form the crux of the action.

The RAMMELLZEE estate is represented by Jeffrey Deitch Gallery (New York).