PRESENTATION: Camille Henrot

Camille Henrot moves seamlessly between film, painting, drawing, sculpture and installation. The artist references self-help, online second-hand marketplaces, cultural anthropology, literature, psychoanalysis, and social media to question what it means to be at once a private individual and a global subject. Henrot is interested in confronting emotional and political issues, and looking at how ideology, globalization, belief and new media are interacting to create an environment of structural anxiety.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Hauser & Wirth Gallery Archive

Complementing an outdoor installation of major bronze sculptures on view throughout the summer, Camille Henrot presents a selection of recent paintings. Produced in large part in Europe over the last two years, Henrot’s work from the series “Butter and Bread”, “Is Today Tomorrow”, “System of Attachment”, and “Monday” are shown together for the first time in the United States. These works typify the ambitious and fiercely creative approach that has cemented Henrot, whose practice moves seamlessly between film, painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation, as one of the most influential and unique voices in contemporary art. Her art is celebrated for its playful and incisive investigations into the banalities of everyday life and the tension we experience as both private individuals and global citizens. Henrot’s recent series of paintings titled “Butter and Bread” (2021) combine digital techniques with gestural brushstrokes to explore abstract expressionist styles. Drawing on her own novice experience with a digital painting application (aptly named Procreate), these works explore the messier aspects of creative production, and reproduction, both in the artist’s practice and in the creation of human life, a recurring motif in her provocative oeuvre. Created spontaneously at the end of each day during the pandemic’s period of social distancing, the paintings from Henrot’s “Is Today Tomorrow” (2020-22) series are akin to diary entries reflecting the specific moments in which they were made. The unifying thread through these works is their square format and apparent random personal content, recalling the look and function of the scrollable images of an Instagram feed and serving as a portrait of an individual life. Contrary to the polished representations of social media, however, the figures in Is Today Tomorrow often seem to struggle to retain their coherence against mostly somber backgrounds, underscoring the porosity of our internal lives and the effort required to hold ourselves together. In both the “System of Attachment” (2018-21) and “Monday” (2016-17) series, Henrot’s bronze figures are inspired by the philosophical concept of perpetual becoming. In “System of Attachment”, Henrot considers the nature of human dependency—from an infant’s earliest bond with its parent to its developmental need to explore––and the myriad ways that the simultaneous need for attachment and separation conditions the relationships throughout our lives. Inspired by the first (and possibly most triggering) day of the week, the works in Henrot’s “Monday” series explore the conflicting feelings that accompany the start of a new week: for many, Monday represents an opportunity for renewal and change, while for others it invokes anxiety and a desire to withdraw from the world.

Photo: Camille Henrot, A day for us, 2020, Watercolour, acrylic and oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cm / 15 3/4 x 15 3/4 in, © ADAGP Camille Henrot, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Gallery

Info: Hauser & Wirth Gallery, 9 Main St, Southampton, NY, USA, Duration: Sculpture: 28/5-4/9/2022, Paintings: 2/7-31/7/2022, Days & Hours: Fri-Sat 11:00-18:00, Sun 12:00-17:00, www.hauserwirth.com/