At the invitation of the Fondation Giacometti, Rebecca Warren—one of contemporary art’s most prominent protagonists for more than twenty years—has selected a number of Alberto Giacometti works held in their collection to show alongside works of her own, including some new works made especially for this exhibition.
This exhibition presents an opportunity to consider Warren’s work in relation to the works of one of the masters of modern art. The Giacometti works chosen by Warren for the exhibition include work from his surrealist period along with his later sculptures, paintings and drawings. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue analyse the revealing, even possibly hallucinatory, connections between her own work and the art and personality of Giacometti.
Giacometti’s method was one of quick, nervous, ceaseless action, repeatedly building and demolishing: a paradoxically meticulous process suggesting an intense search for something—images, realities—as yet unknown to him. Warren’s method consists in working slowly, but almost in the dark, through trial and error, while similarly paying exhaustive attention to the—as yet unknown—potential of the particular sculpture she is working on. Warren describes this hybrid experiment—between the two sets of works in a shared space—as the initial contact between almost living organisms, the exact nature of which is to be discovered in the process of assembling the show.
The title of the exhibition “ASensitiv,” a term Warren has coined, emphasises the paradoxical nature of the relationship between the artists—ranging from an idea of a psychic hypersensitivity to one that is necessarily insensitive, almost as if generated by an algorithm. From her early sculptures displaying heavily erotic volumes to her wall-based vitrines and assemblages, to the recent slender totems, Warren’s work shows an unusual attention to the figure, to flesh, matter, the arrangement of parts, the plinth, but also, and fundamentally, to teetering chaos and emergent form. Her broad creative palette incorporates an array of modernist and pop culture influences, and a wide variety of materials including clay, neon and bronze as well as less identifiable fragments. Born in 1965 in Pinhoe, Devon, Warren lives and works in London. She was elected as a Royal Academician at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2013. In 2020, she was awarded the honor of Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to art.
From her early sculptures displaying heavily erotic volumes to her wall-based vitrines and assemblages, to the recent slender totems, Warren’s work shows an unusual attention to the figure, to flesh, matter, the arrangement of parts, the plinth, but also, and fundamentally, to teetering chaos and emergent form. Her broad creative palette incorporates an array of modernist and pop culture influences, and a wide variety of materials including clay, neon and bronze as well as less identifiable fragments. Born in 1965 in Pinhoe, Devon, Warren lives and works in London. She was elected as a Royal Academician at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2013. In 2020, she was awarded the honor of Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to art.
Curated by
Françoise Cohen
at Fondation Giacometti, Paris
until July 2, 2023