Nudes in Paris: A Review of Fall 2024 Gallery Shows
The Olympics are over, and Paris’ galleries are shifting their fall programming away from sports themes. An emerging autumn trend is the nude, a form rife with history, especially in the French art historical tradition. Shows by Koak and Katerina Olschbaur at Perrotin, a group show at Semiose, Nicole Eisenman’s solo at Hauser & Wirth, and a street art exhibition at the Petit Palais all echo this focus on the human body.
The bold curving lines composing Koak’s female figures possess a graphic quality that hints at the artist’s background in comics and is a standout show at Perrotin Gallery. The soft forms imbue a subtle vulnerability to her figures, especially potent when used to depict her intergenerational family, including her mother and grandmother. In Koak’s new work, the nude is refigured and reimagined, and the delicacy, intimacy, and individuality of each sitter are brought to the foreground through her interplay of outline, shadows, and subject matter.
Credit & Courtesy of: Koak, Nancy in Blue (2024), Carmine (2023–2024), Self-portrait from a Green Window (after Lois Dodd), (2023–2024), exhibition view at Perrotin Paris
Artist: https://koak.net/
Perrotin Gallery: https://www.perrotin.com/
Katerina Olschbaur’s concurrent show at Perrotin Gallery features the nude female form in large monochromes with a distinct pictorial vocabulary. The nude figures take many personae. At times, they are mythological, boasting wings or two heads. Other figures are archetypical, such as a woman standing in high heels or one that lies relaxing with a discarded wine glass hanging in a red color field nearby. In another work, four women gather around a floating book, their bodies in various stages of completion. Color and form decompose into dreamlike, liminal spaces, an otherworld where these figures exist outside the every day to present themselves for contemplation.
Credit & Courtesy of: Katherina Olschbaur, Georgianna (2023–2024), My Muses (2024) at Perrotin Paris
Artist: http://www.katherinaolschbaur.com/
Perrotin Gallery: https://www.perrotin.com/
At Semiose, the group show is thematically based on contemporary interpretations of surrealism to coincide with the nearby Pompidou Center’s Surrealism presentation. One of the show's standouts was Laurent Proux whose works feature figures bent and contorted in grotesque positions. The backgrounds are distinctly surrealist, but the figures are naturalistically uncanny enough to be disconcerting. The nude here is used to elicit a visceral reaction, it stuns and shocks before evoking and inviting the viewer’s curiosity.
Credit & Courtesy of: Laurent Proux, The Acrobat (2024), Acrobatics (2024) at Semiose Gallery
Artist: https://www.laurentproux.com/
Semiose Gallery: https://semiose.com/
Xie Lei’s figures radiate from within, but their glow is eerie. His use of color is spare and muted. Somber, deep blue hues, and sickly greens and yellows set a dark mood and ominous tone. These figures have a distinct feeling of internal struggle and torment. As subjects, they seem perched on the edge of disappearance, their faces obscured by the light seemingly emanating from within the painting, making their position in reality fragile and uncertain.
Credit & Courtesy of: Xie Lei, Indication (2024), Indication II (2024), Giving birth (2024) at Semiose Gallery
Artist: http://www.xie-lei.com/
Semiose Gallery: https://semiose.com/
Nicole Eisenman’s Hauser & Wirth show is dominated by a monumental moving sculpture featuring two figures. One stands with an arm jerking up and down in a futile motion. Its other arm clings to a strap attached to a square-wheeled cart—another exercise in futility—on which the second figure crouches on all fours. This piece, originally part of Eisenman’s 2019 Whitney Biennial installation, was a resounding success and reintroduction to new audiences unaware of her centrality to the 90s art dialogue. The sculpture is surrounded by paintings, including a diptych entitled ‘The Artist at Work.’ This painting playfully hints at a more cheeky, perhaps even sexual, interpretation of the phrase and reflects a 90s sensibility and use of parody in art-making practices.
Art Credit & Courtesy of: Nicole Eisenman, Perpetual Motion Machine (2019) at Hauser & Wirth|Paris
Artist: https://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/26346-nicole-eisenman/
Hauser & Wirth Gallery: https://www.hauserwirth.com/
Credit & Courtesy of: Nicole Eisenman, The Artist at Work (2023) at Hauser & Wirth|Paris
Artist: https://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/26346-nicole-eisenman/
Hauser & Wirth Gallery: https://www.hauserwirth.com/
The Petit Palais’ street art exhibition, entitled We Are Here, is a juxtaposition of older 1800’s era French monumental painting alongside a variety of works by street artists. Bodies twist, lay, pose, intertwine, float, and struggle - all in the name of representation and the history of representation. The works on view present diverse themes, including social realism’s critique of poverty, religion, myth, and death. The show culminates in a gallery filled with a salon-style display capturing the energy of the streets and its culture that upends the neatness of modern, institutional display and is reminiscent of 19th-century Paris artists’ salons.
Credit & Courtesy of: We are Here, Group Show, Exhibition Views, Petit Palais | Paris
Show: https://www.petitpalais.paris.fr/en/expositions/we-are-here
Petit Palais: https://www.petitpalais.paris.fr/en
Additional Reading:
● Koak, Lake Margrethe at Perrotin runs until October 5, 2024: https://leaflet.perrotin.com/view/842/lake-margrethe
● Katherina Olschbaur, Sweet Expulsion at Perrotin runs until September 21, 2024: https://leaflet.perrotin.com/view/843/sweet-expulsion
● Second Nature at Semiose runs until October 5, 2024: https://semiose.com/en/exhibition/second-nature-2024/
● Nicole Eisenman, With, And, Of, On Sculpture at Hauser & Wirth runs until September 21, 2024: https://www.hauserwirth.com/hauser-wirth-exhibitions/nicole-eisenman/
● We are Here at Petit Palais runs until November 17, 2024:
https://www.petitpalais.paris.fr/expositions/we-are-here
Written & Reviewed by Nerissa Khan
Executive Edited by Renée Vara
Edited by Valentina Scarzella
All content ©VARA ART. All images and art © Artists & Galleries