More than desire, which was the central theme of the Ad Libitum Collection, to which Leonard and the Rainbow belongs, this piece of ROD’s is about love. To be more precise, it’s about the love lesson displayed by Leonard over the first minutes of Human, Yann Artus-Bertrand’s documentary, which moved the artist profoundly.

From that lesson of love ROD borrowed all colours, from the darkest to the most luminous, pixellated and set inside a perfect square.

Against a raw background combining plastic, branches and nails, constituting a fertile ground for utter poverty and violence, the artist has set up cubes, printed, burnt, then painted. And at the heart of this jumble ROD has set a golden doll, stained with blood, eyes closed, an allegory of defiled innocence. Magnified. Sacrificed.

In this gruesome collection, the charred cubes, both ethereal and rigorously contained, though carrying the faces and stigmata of childhood terror and suffering, blow up into a myriad of colors.
Because although cruelty has destroyed Leonard by making him believe in love-pain, truth hasn’t condemned him. Above all else it has taught him the beauty of love of which he knew nothing.
Its light and its power.
Plaster, hope, essential flow.
Rainbow.