PRESENTATION: Sophie Calle-Catalogue Raisonné Of The Unfinished

Sophie Calle’s work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement of the 1960s known as Oulipo. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines identity and intimacy. She is recognized for her detective-like ability to follow strangers and investigate their private lives. Her photographic work often includes panels of text of her own writing.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Fraenkel Gallery Archive

For more than forty years Sophie Calle has made work that draws from her life, transforming elements from her public and private relationships into intimate narratives. Her solo exhibition features several series exploring questions about legacy and loss, topics Calle approaches with her typical humor and candor. Making its U.S. debut, “catalogue raisonné of the unfinished” focuses on projects Calle previously conceptualized but didn’t pursue. Each piece pairs fragments from the project with Calle’s text about its failure. Another series, “Picassos in lockdown”, comprises photographs Calle made at the Musée National Picasso in Paris during the pandemic. Each shows a painting covered for protection while the museum was closed. The exhibition also features a selection of works looking at death and remembrance through the lens of Calle’s relationship with her parents. The series” catalogue raisonné of the unfinished” collects photographs, handwritten notes, comic books, and other documents, each paired with a short text describing the artwork Calle had originally imagined and how it came to (not) be. A red stamp across each text pronounces her reason for rejecting the work. The projects range from Calle’s request for museum visitors to propose ideas for her to enact (“Not exhilarating”), to an attempt to insert herself into a Mexican comic book collection that included the word “Calle” in the title (“Anecdotal”). Together, the series presents a sort of self-imposed salon des refusés, revealing glimpses of Calle’s process and celebrating the transformation of many dead ends into a final positive form. In 2023, Musée National Picasso presented a solo exhibition of Calle’s work, timed to the 50th anniversary of the death of Pablo Picasso. The deliberately retrospective exhibition, titled “À toi de faire, ma mignonne” (“It’s up to you, my darling”) included photographs Calle made while the museum was closed during the pandemic, recording the cloth and paper coverings that shielded Picasso’s paintings from light and dust. Calle has described her encounter with the paintings: “The Picassos were under protection, wrapped up, hidden. Underneath — a ghostlike, less intimidating presence,” she writes. Titled after the works they conceal, the photographs in Picassos in lockdown encourage the viewer to recall the original painting.  A third gallery presents selections from “Autobiographies” and other elegiac, family-focused works, pairing photographs and texts in frames or urn-like wooden boxes. In “Autobiographies (Morning)”, Calle awaits her father’s last words, while “Autobiographies (My Mother Died)” reproduces notes about death from Calle’s diary and her mother’s. A glass-fronted box titled “Necrology” presents the obituary Calle commissioned for herself, hidden behind pinned butterflies to remain unreadable. The piece incorporates Calle’s commentary about her decision to obscure the writing: “So as not to attract too much attention from death, I decided it was best to cover up what I did not want to read,” she notes. In these and other works, Calle addresses her own mortality with characteristic honesty and wit, taking on the question of how we remember and are in turn remembered.

Photo: Sophie Calle, Yes (Infernal), 2025 [detail], text panel in artist’s frame, pigment print, sandblasted acrylic, 24-1/2 x 37-1/2 inches (frame) [62.2 x 95.3 cm], edition of 3 + 1 AP in English & edition of 3 + 1 AP in French, © Sophie Calle, Courtesy the artist and Fraenkel Gallery

Info: Fraenkel Gallery, 49 Geary Street, 4th Floor, San Francisco, CA, USA, Duration: 27/2-12/4/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:30-17:30, Sat 11:00-17:00, https://fraenkelgallery.com/