Claire Tabouret: I am spacious, singing flesh

Collateral Event of the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
Curated by Kathryn Weir
April 23 – November 27, 2022 | Palazzo Cavanis
Opening Reception on Wednesday, April 20, 2022 from 6 pm to 9 pm

‘Claire Tabouret: I am spacious, singing flesh’ presents a new critical reading of key dimensions of the Los Angeles-based French artist’s work in a remarkable survey 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 andsubjectivities through which to consider alternative relationships amongst human beings, and between human beings and their environment, in theface of ecological and social crises and in communication with the supernatural.

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.

This exhibition is presented by FABA (Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte) in collaboration with Almine Rech. 

— Kathryn Weir, Curator

Palazzo Cavanis
Dorsoduro 920
30123 Venice