Studio Conversations — Galerie David Zwirner, Paris
David Zwirner Gallery presents Studio Conversations, an artistic dialogue of subtlety and finesse that highlights painterly sensibilities, connected by a shared perspective on a very tangible reality and the tension of its potential escape.
By bringing together three young artists—Christine Safa, Nino Kapanadze, and Jean Claracq—with influential figures they themselves selected—respectively Suzan Frecon, Mamma Andersson, and Marcel Dzama—the exhibition curated by Anaël Pigeat opens as a triptych and unfolds into a masterful sextet, where each gaze responds to another in a spellbinding harmony.
Above all, the show gives rise to compelling exchanges, compiled in the accompanying exhibition material. A simplicity that almost surprises, given how precious these writings are—revealing decisive parts of each artist’s world. Far from being confined to an insular or purely emotional affinity, the dialogue between the works asserts its coherence through the rhythm of its form, through the intensity of the territories the invited artists dare to explore and expose in a more open context. These are intimate, unprecedented perspectives on their practices, offering unexpected facets in return. Majestic yet humble, each artist’s work creates an ethereal atmosphere with a poetic breath, where masks, forms, and human figures mingle with the silent, simple spectacle of the world. Everywhere, a shared reverence for light emerges—in nearly every piece, there is mention of the moon, the sun, shadows, and trees. And of the gaze turned upon them.
An ideal world, in a sense—where chosen kinship unfolds through exchange, free from any responsibility other than that of breathing life into creation, through the experiences that accompany it and the secrets that make it exceed its frame. Delicacy, sensitivity, and elective affinities converge to generate new intensities—made all the more powerful by their quiet refusal of spectacle. We are invited fully into long-term artistic processes that resonate with abrupt clarity, even without a dictated theme. Fantasy blends with contrasting dreams (Marcel Dzama); reality takes on a surreal hue through the shadow of a mask (Mamma Andersson); the still body escapes into an allegorical journey (Christine Safa); the city becomes an Edenic garden of possibilities for those who know where to look (Jean Claracq); paint as matter radiates with the power of a celestial body (Suzan Frecon); and the urban landscape flows like a ghostly theater (Nino Kapanadze)… These vivid, real-time experiences (and this list is far from exhaustive) redefine the scope of the “power” of representation.
Abstraction and figuration, reality and dream, sharp observation and boundless imagination coexist with graceful porosity—made vivid through the radical curatorial choice of restraint—giving life to suspended moments within each artist’s imaginary world. As if picking up mid-flight a conversation that has become universal, each carries the thread of our consciousness, spinning it toward other realms.
Studio Conversations, David Zwirner, Paris, 108, rue Vieille du Temple, 75003 Paris — April 1—May 24, 2025 — Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat: 11 AM-7 PM
