Mes plus belles

A solo exhibition at le Sphinx, Paris, as part of the studio project of artist Benjamin Swaim. Artists are invited to install a small group of new works in progress.

There will be roses and women, cut carefully from their ground, floating and bereft of context. There will be coiffed women taken out of their time, refigured and painted. There will be gestures, downcast eyes, and lingerie, cut to another form and colour. These are works in series and works in progress, which draw on collections (of journals and postcards) with insouciance and gravity. The works are detached and frivolous, frequently negligent or carefree. The works are serious and austere, frequently solemn or circumspect. The writer Danielle Robert-Guédon has remarked on ‘a semantic discrepancy and an insistence on fetishistic symbols which often constitute figures of desire. Images and words are inseparable, returning as an obsession of openings: windows, legs, facades, faces’ in Kivland’s work.