SALOMÉ CHATRIOT: LA VICTOIRE D’ARLEQUIN
Carl Kostyál is delighted to present ‘La Victoire d’Arlequin’, a new body of work by Paris-based Salomé Chatriot (b. 1995).
March 13 – April 26, 2025
La Victoire d’Arlequin presents Salomé Chatriot’s continued exploration of the vesicular and sinuous conduits between organic and synthetic materials. Through her acute technological and tactile process, she captures her own respiratory rhythm to breathe life into the forms. The humidity of her exhalation is palpable, glistening on their surfaces.
Since her initial performances, in which her breath was calibrated to inform the structure of her work—be it painting, sculpture, video, or installation—her practice has continued to evolve. These works embody her dialogue between organisms and apparatus: from the gears of a turbo generator to the CGI shapes that pulsate in her rhythm and, finally, the oil and enamel that spread across aluminium. These pieces form a symbiosis of both bodies. Neither is master over the other; rather, in a delicate pas de deux, it breathes in, she breathes out, borders collapse, and new bodies take form.
Chatriot’s typically abstract shapes—undulating tentacles, serpentine coils, and lustrous orbs—sprout human silhouettes. In her Idols series, the artist presents bodies ensconced in their protective chrysalis as they emerge in metamorphosis. For the first time, these figures have fully formed faces. Yet, frozen in archetypal perfection, their mouths are hollow, and in place of the density of vital matter, they glow from within—void. As the diptych presents, these idols are figures to be observed in 360 degrees, totems of past and future adoration. On the wall, a Galalith relic extends this exploration, its milky orb—an early plastic derived from casein—paradoxically bridging the inert and the animate, the primordial and the alchemical.
Where the Harlequin reigns, reality escapes us—forms imbricate into the petals and folds of her figures, and representations splinter across the glossy planes of her surfaces. No longer a mere trickster, she is logic itself, a traveler between worlds who returns bearing the iridescent traces of every crossing. Through Chatriot’s prism, we step forward, not seeking mastery but transformation—like the Harlequin’s patchwork, which, in its thousand colours, does not resolve into white but into a spectrum so complete that it shimmers beyond the visible.