Solo show

Gäelle Choisne (1985, FR) lives and works in Paris. Sensitive to contemporary issues, Gaëlle Choisne’s practice considers the complexity of the world, its political and cultural disorder, whether it be the over-exploitation of nature, its resources, or the vestiges of colonial history, where Creole esoteric traditions, myths and popular cultures mingle. Her projects are conceived as ecosystems of sharing and collaboration, pockets of «resistance» where new possibilities are created, notably with the «Temple of Love» project. Initiated from Roland Barthes’ original essay on love, «Fragments d’un discours amoureux» (1977), Gaëlle Choisne adds a political dimension to the concept of love by paying homage to invisible bodies, minority and fragile souls, and dispossessed hearts. «Temple of love » is an evolutionary project defining itself through its modes of appearance and genesis according to its invitations and its location. The works/installations of Gaëlle Choisne have been exhibited in many institutions: (Vitry-sur-Seine), Centrale Powerhouse (Montreal), CAFA Museum (Beijing), Pera Museum (Istanbul), MAM - Musée d’art moderne de Paris, Musée Fabre (Montpellier), Zacheta Gallery (Warsaw), The Mistake Room (Los Angeles), Bétonsalon (Paris), Gr_und project space (Berlin), MAMO - Centre d’art de la Cité radieuse de Marseille, La Villette x Pompidou (Paris), Centre d’art contemporain La Halle des bouchers (Vienne), Musée archéologique Henri-Prade (Lattes), Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon etc. She has also participated in several biennials and triennials: 15th Gwandju Biennial (2024), 3rd Toronto Biennial of Art (2024), 5th New Museum Triennial (2021), 11th International Biennial of Contemporary Art (GIBCA), 13th International Biennial of Lyon (2015), 12th Havana Biennial (2015), Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017) and 14th Curitiba Biennial (2017). She has been part of many residency programs in France and internationally such as “Meeting Points collaboration” with CCA -Campus Caraïbéen des Arts (Martinique), Bethanian-KW (Berlin), the Rijksakademie (Amsterdam), Atelier Van Lieshout (Rotterdam), the Cité Internationale des Arts de Paris and OPTICA & Art3 Valence (Montreal). In 2024, Gaëlle Choisne won the Marcel Duchamp Prize and, in 2021, the AWARE Prize. In 2019, she is nominated for the Ricard Foundation Prize and the Sam Art Project. Gaëlle Choisne is represented by the gallery Air de Paris, Romainville (FR).

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Aquarium Biennial Fair Fruits Installation Love Performance Plants Sculpture Shells Stèles Temple of Love Videos Workshop

Lorna Simpson & Gaëlle Choisne – Mentorship, Reiffers Art Initiatives - Gaëlle Choisne

Lorna Simpson & Gaëlle Choisne – Mentorship, Reiffers Art Initiatives, 2023

Composed like Cecil Taylor’s mirror-music, the present exhibition recounts the vibratory encounter between Lorna Simpson and Gaëlle Choisne, punctuated by their comings and goings towards each other, like the fleeting notations of a score in the making for a four- hand piece. Intertwined from one floor to the other for the duration of the joint performance that is their exhibition, their works oscillate between the archives of the present and the reper- toire of the contemporary. Simpson’s works—her paintings, of apparent formal coherence, her conceptual photographs imbued with serial rigor—and Choisne’s—collages and assemblages of apparently chaotic or rather «chaordic» facture, between order and chaos, to borrow the artist’s expression, and truly esoteric, even mystical compositions—do not seek harmony within themsel- ves any more than between them.

As black women artists their Afro-diasporic filiation is the taut red thread of their practice, between representation, abstraction and documentation, bifurcation and obfuscation of and in their sources, breaking with essentialist assignations as much as steering away from the search of rootedness. Their native and adoptive Caribbean genealogy, from one generation to the next— Cuban and Jamaican for Lorna—Haitian for Gaëlle with Mexican and Cuban influences—trans- cribes their globalized experiences and transcends their circumstantial American and French ci- tizenship, respectively.

In this unique and unprecedented joint exhibition, a common attention to nature as an endangered species, erupts between the image of women and traditional representations of the landscape. Polar in Lorna’s work, tropical in Gaëlle’s, nature discovers and covers black faces and racialized spaces through visual cracks in the canvas while left-over concrete slates, cardboard ribbings, brass mesh, and chained shells unite and separate life and art in a vast «material squabbling»* (Choisne).

Claire Tancons

Exhibition Curator