Claire Tabouret’s exhibition curated by Kathryn Weir that explores multiple transformations: of self, other, collective identities, struggle, release, refuge.
A powerful and unexpected dialogue is created with a number of vernacular devotional objects drawn from archaeological and liturgical collections in Italy, invoking an ambivalent threshold in Tabouret’s practice, a portal into multiple temporalities and subjectivities through which to consider alternative relationships amongst human beings, and between human beings and their environment, in the face of ecological and social crises and in communication with the supernatural.
"I haven’t seen the subject of my paintings in a while . . . due to social distancing. So the act of painting them became more nostalgic."
Across 25 works by Tabouret – the earliest from 2008 but drawn mostly from the last decade of the artist’s multifaceted practice – the exhibition articulates various structures and fluidities existing within subjectivity and constructed identities through paintings, sculpture, video and works on paper. Errant subjectivities and magical materialism constitute thematic axes of the exhibition. Gradually, a suspended potential and metaphysical friction inscribed in the works comes to the fore through associations interior and exterior, material and spiritual, visible and invisible.
In her figurative paintings, drawings and sculptures, Claire Tabouret scrutinizes identity and takes a closer look at childhood and its enigmas, the individual isolated or within a group. Sometimes covered, made up or disguised, children and women with mute faces stand upright in front of the viewer like frozen frames. The recent immersive mural realized at Fabrègues Castle in the south of France is an example of the timeless and sometimes carnivalesque universe that the artist creates in her paintings. Often coated with a primary fluorescent layer, and realized on large-scale canvas, her works, whose tonalities are sometimes dark and sometimes acidic, as in the ensemble of the Débutantes, exude theatrical enigma. Before the representation of groups and characters, which may recall those of Romantic painting, Claire Tabouret was often interested in aquatic diurnal and nocturnal landscapes. During this time, she notably realized the Maisons Inondées, the series which brought her to recognition, as well as the ensemble entitled Migrants. Originating in internet or archival found photographs, her canvases are tainted with personal experience, unfurling a universe of stories and memories.