LOUIS GARY

Louis Gary’s playful approach to art is grounded in a daring and impeccable workmanship. Working across sculpture, painting and photography, he creates a consciousness-altering universe where embossed sculptures are arranged in unfamiliar syntax, their narrative intertwined with a clumsy psychoanalysis that links together the grotesque, poetry and black humor. The precision and the straightforward attitude in his use of colour positions the latter as the main ingredient of sculptural form. He uses his photographic practice to recreate the sensitive background of his work, anchoring it in a history of forms that plays its own ambiguities without irony. 

Positioned somewhere between a gallery of portraits, naïve landscapes and simple depictions of everyday objects, these works question the notions of distance and scale—between human beings and things, between thought patterns and emotions, between memory and presence. Embracing a great sensory and formal liberty, Louis Gary’s works are inspired by non-dualist traditions in philosophy as well as the democratizing stance of the Arts & Crafts movement, seeking a more direct relationship with viewers through figurative juxtapositions from everyday lives of men and women in ordinary settings. This humility and simplicity is also at work in his material process: his bas-reliefs are produced by combining simple materials such as wood, styrofoam and painted plaster, with techniques from façade design, movie set decoration and model-making. 

As an exploration of the relationship between furniture and sculpture, between the use value of decorative objects and their animistic presence and potentials, Louis Gary’s work is a humorous celebration of contemplation, the supernatural and the carnival, offering a lookout into a new consideration of the world, gestures and things. 

Louis Gary studied at the Ecole Régionale des Beaux-Arts in Nantes, at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles and at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Marseille. His recent solo exhibitions include Et le coeur devient un flacon de parfum, Le Poctb, Orléans, 2021; You Wanted it Darker, Glassbox, Paris, 2020; Magic Saliva, Semiose Galerie, 2019; Mathilde et Mylène ; L’Ahah, Paris, 2019. His work has been included in group shows at The Pill Istanbul (2022); Le Radar - Centre d’art actuel (Bayeux, 2022); Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard, Paris (2018); Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers (2018); Glassbox, Paris (2016); Moly Sabata, Sablons (2014) among others. He has so far published two artist books: Bonjour Alan (Zool Editions, 2021) and Ici (September Books, 2020).