Genieve Figgis “Immortal Reflection”

Almine Rech Gallery

[Image: Genieve Figgis "Reflection" (2021) Acrylic on canvas 78 3/4 x 59 1/8 in / © Genieve Figgis - Courtesy of the Artist and Almine Rech - Photo: Eric van Kampen.]

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Almine Rech New York presents Immortal Reflection, a solo exhibition of new works by Genieve Figgis. This will be Figgis’ first show at Almine Rech New York and fifth exhibition with the gallery.

A literary genre developed in 18th century France later known as the libertine novel. From the mid 1750s until the French Revolution, writers such as Denis Diderot, Cyrano de Bergerac and Choderlos de Laclos created narratives that were deeply rebellious. Their work balance seduction and the erotic with a resistance to the structures of the establishment. Genieve Figgis’s subversive paintings share the same sensibility. Her work is innately libertine, exuding pleasure and satire, sensitivity and subversion in equal measure.

Figgis presents the history of painting as an ongoing conversation, reworking, reimagining and re-contextualising the content and composition of historic works in a very personal way. Rococo painters such as Jean-Honoré Fragonard and François Boucher are recurrent visual references. She creates what she describes as “cover versions” of their work. There is a clear delight in the artist’s process of recreating the narratives, fashion, interiors and characters in her source paintings. Yet like a new version of a play or a film, Figgis imbues these painted scenes with her own personality. Everyone version becomes a unique take on the original, with its own sense of meaning. The artist gets to insert herself within the work and take part, rather than observe from a distance. She gets to step inside the world that fascinates her, and takes the viewer with her.

- Francesca Gavin, Art writer and Curator