Illusions of Comfort - Viewing Room

Illusions of Comfort brings together artists who explore the politics of comfort and its role in the organization of our social and intimate relationships. In his influential essay 'The Idea of Comfort' (1991), theorist, artist and designer Tomás Maldonado speaks of comfort as an illusion of intimacy, an ideal of domestic life centered on privacy, the nuclear family and the standardisation of the material environment. The exhibition addresses the relevance of domestic space in our contemporary daily lives and the way in which has been incorporated into artists' imagery, maintaining an awkward, sometimes humorous relationship to comfort.

For Laëtitia Badaut Haussmann, attachment, danger and safety, present in the threatening, also voracious, dog’s gesture permeate the spaces we inhabit daily. The image is taken from an advertisement aiming to highlight the resistance of the marketed fabric.

Laëtitia Badaut Haussmann (b.1980) lives and works between London and Paris. Her research is situated at the intersection of several fields including domesticity, psychology and feminism. Her practice is centred around the concept of design and its history as a social and political expression.
Her work has been the subject of several solo and group shows, most recent include: Ikon Gallery (2022, Birmingham), Musée d’Art Moderne (2021, Paris), Fondation Pernod Ricard (2021, Paris), The Community (2021, Pantin), A Tale of A Tub (2021, Rotterdam), Centre Pompidou (2020, Paris), Beeler Gallery (2020, Columbus, Ohio), MACRO (2020, Rome), MRAC (2019, Sérignan), Musée départemental d’art contemporain de Rochechouart (2018, Rochechouart), Kettle’s Yard (2018, Cambridge), MUSEION (2017, Bolzano), MUDAM (2017, Luxembourg), Centre Pompidou (2017, Metz and Paris).

Blurring the boundaries between domestic environment and working space, Anne Bourse’s works often echo the household accessories she surrounds herself with. Ssxx scx xsc xs c s xs xs I and Prisone (2), two handmade mattresses, get rid of their domestic functional side and reveal Bourse’s visual obsessions that take shape through patterns sewn onto fabric or directly drawn on the textile surface.

Anne Bourse (b. 1982 in Lyon) lives and works in Paris. She graduated from the Beaux-Arts in Lyon. Her work has been shown at Galerie Edouard Manet, Gennevilliers ; Palais de Tokyo, Paris ; Fondation Ricard, Paris ; Parc Saint Léger, Pougues-les-Eaux ; Centre international de l’art et du paysage, Vassivière ; Pauline Perplexe, Arcueil ; Cassandra Cassandra, Toronto.

A number of positions in the exhibition expose the network of relationships which define the circulation of commodities, seen today as an intimate affair. Bernadette Corporation, a group whose identity and brand are synonymous, presents a chrome bathroom faucet as a luxury household good, monogrammed ‘BC’ and engraved with online comments about Rihanna, playing on the language of pop culture and its incorporation into domestic space.

Bernadette Corporation is an artist-collective founded in 1994. The group organized spontaneous, aimless events in the public space. In 1995, Bernadette Corporation evolved into a clothing brand, followed by a self-publishing company which published the art magazine called Made in USA from 1999 to 2001. Bernadette Corporation has also produced films, such as Hell Frozen Over (2000), and Get Rid of Yourself (2003), as well as exhibitions in art galleries and museums around the world.

From car tuning, to cosplay, to hacking, to his Peranakan heritage: an ethnic group from South-East Asia absorbed by cultural smoothing, Kim Farkas borrows from hybrid fields between counter-cultures and laboratories of capitalism. It is the rigour and uniqueness of these practices, paradoxically close to serial production, and their circulation in our liberal economy, that interests the artist.

By stratifying composite materials, through games of transparency and moiré reflections, he creates worlds within which objects are revealed. The three light sculptures presented in Illusions of Comfort gobble 3D reproductions of bazar Asian commodities that are themselves replicas of everyday objects conceived to accompany loved ones after death. Within this internal activity, forms, ideas and materials become conduits of power, both political and spiritual.

Kim Farkas (b. 1988, Paris) lives and works in Paris, France. The artist received his BA in graphic design from Olivier de Serres, Paris, in 2009, his BFA from Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2012, and his MFA from Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2014. Kim Farkas is a recipient of the CNAP Grant and Prix des amis des Beaux-Arts and has been a frequent collaborator with Holoholo Books. Past solo exhibitions include : Downs & Ross, New York (2021) ; Bagnoler, Bagnolet (2019) ; Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles (2017). Recent group exhibitions include : FRAC Pays de la Loire, Nantes (2021) ; Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris (2021) ; Galerie des Filles du Calvaire, Paris (2021) ; High Art, Paris (2020).

Hélène Fauquet's UV-prints on wood of found photographs show 1960s bubble mirrors and decorative stained glass in life-size. The artist notes how "the geometric designs of stained glass are often a copy of a copy, to the point where their source is lost." The technique of UV-printing is generally used for advertisement, as it allows printing on thicker materials. "The light gets fixed- rays of the image are fixed while printing them," says Fauquet, describing how the ink of the sometimes pixelated found picture spreads on and in the untreated wood, giving the images a velvety feel.

Hélène Fauquet works with the hidden effects of image circulation. While Propeller draws from fragments of disposed amateur photos,  All Clear Signal reproduces stained glass motifs of isolated privacy windows typically found in domestic housing, producing an opaque, anonymous reflection.

Hélène Fauquet (b. 1989, Saint-Saulve) lives and works in Vienna. Recent solo exhibitions include : Edouard Montassut, Paris (2020) ; Interiors, Meyer Kainer, Vienna (2019) ; Interiors, Kunstverein Nürnberg, Nuremberg (2019) ; Hélène Fauquet, Kunstverein Eisenstadt, Austria (2019) ; La Colline, Schiefe Zähne, Berlin (2018) ; MMXVI, FORDE, Geneva (2016). Recent group exhibitions include : Onsen Confidential, with Schiefe Zähne, Tokyo (2021) ; Jahresgaben 2019, Kunstverein Nürnberg (2019) ; Emozionale II, Foundation Vienna, Vienna (2019) ; Subsets, Christian Andersen, Copenhaguen (2019) ; Bischof, Evelyn, Megerle, Galleria Acappella, Napoli (2019) ; Zum Jülichstübli, Jan Kaps, Cologne (2017) ; Édouard Montassut, Paris (2017).

Intimate life and artistic practice can merge into one indistinguishable whole. The fictional entity Jacent creates atmospheres inspired by their intimate and domestic life, involving the audience as an essential element in them. Their series of armchairs, made of cut and painted earthenware tiles, are punctuated by drawings of bees painted on a white background in the tradition of the herbarium. Vulnerable and endangered, they recall the theme of their first pieces of furniture, In Jeopardy, which featured animals in danger of extinction.

The artist duo Jacent (Jade Fourès-Varnier and Vincent de Hoÿm, b. 1984) creates large-scale installations inspired by their intimate and domestic life where visitors are received as guests. Depending on the context, the couple adapts their multidisciplinary proposals which can be perceived as a form of total art. The fusion of art and life has been at the heart of their practice since the beginning of their collaboration in 2014. The duo founded Tonus, an independent exhibition space that perpetuates this open-mindedness.

Recent solo exhibitions include : CAC Normandie (2022) ; Sans titre, Paris (2022) ; sonneundsolche, Düsseldorf (2022) ; Cocotte, Treignac (2022) ; Liste Art Fair (Special Guest Program, 2021), Basel ; Plat-, Amsterdam (2019) ; PSM, Berlin (2018) ; In Extenso, Clermont-Ferrand (2017) ; KW Institut for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2017).

Fernanda Laguna replaces the belief in the professional work of art with an intuitive, empathic and more intimate approach to the role of the artist. Her use of traditionally feminine resources and techniques, such as wicker, ribbons, or faux jewellery expresses an independence from an assumed hierarchy of materials and subject matters.

Fernanda Laguna (b. 1972) lives and works in Buenos Aires. As an artist, writer, activist and curator, she created several cultural spaces that are until today an effective part of her practice. Laguna started showing her work in the post-dictatorial Argentina, where artists highly questioned the idea of artistic professionalism and taste by defending a recovered space of joy and desire.

Laguna's work was recently presented in the solo exhibition Fernanda Laguna : The Path of the Heart at the Drawing Center, New York (2022). The artist had a survey exhibition at the Institute for Contemporary Art at the Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond (2021). Her work was part of the exhibition Take Me (I’m yours) curated by Christian Boltanski, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Chiara Parisi at Villa Medici, Rome (2018); and Casa Tomada curated by José Luis Blondet, Ruba Katrib and Candice Hopkins, SITE Santa Fe, NM, (2018).

Traditional oppositions between Applied and Fine Arts are critically confronted and expanded into a number of non-hierarchized supports. Nick Mauss’ new series of ceramic wall works are the result of the stratification of different layers overlapped in the intervals of the firing phases of the ceramic glaze: movements and recurring ornamental motifs repeat themselves and collide with one another to conquer the foreground.

Nick Mauss (b. 1980) lives and works between in New York. Mauss formed his work through a finely tuned sensory register, with drawing at the centre of a praxis which otherwise eludes all simple categorizations. Expanding the medium of drawing through multiple registers at the same time, Mauss’ approach to drawing fuses peri-patetically to other possible formats, including sculpture, publications, the format of the exhibition, and writing. This July, Mauss contributes as an invited artist to the survey exhibition of Christian Bérard at the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco. He recently had a solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland (2020) and was featured in the exhibition Les Flammes. L’âge de la céramique at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, curated by Anne Dressen (2021). His work was part of Transcorporealities at Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2019). He has had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum, New York (2018), Triennale di Milano and Torre Velasca, Milan (2018) and at the Serralves Museum, Porto (2017) with an accompanying catalogue.

Bart Julius Peters transforms his everyday reality into a dreamlike, sensual and often nostalgic imaginary world. Closely related to the history of painting, Bart’s photographs sublimate beauty captured without effort in a fleeting and ephemeral moment, making light an essential element of his poetics.

Bart Julius Peters (b. 1971, Kuwait) studied at the Rietveld Academy and publishes in various magazines such as «RE_magazine», «Fantastic Man», and «Foam magazine» His oeuvre is characterized by a sense of nostalgia, romance, and agelessness. As a cosmopolitan vagabond Peters roams the world in search of the «old world» old-fashioned places and people, situations of a society running backward. Bart Julius Peters recently had a solo exhibition at Eenwerk, Amsterdam (2022) and at the Van Loon Museum in Amsterdam (2009).

Other works in the exhibition are driven by the private as a means to question the authority of the savant, often male, painter. By claiming that she is a “Sunday Painter” Emily Sundblad produces speedy, expressive paintings depicting flowers, still life and her close environment, more recently notating the conditions of a life on hold by the pandemic.

Emily Sundblad (b. 1977, Dalsjöfors, Sweden) lives and works in New York. Artist, performer, curator and co-founder of Reena Spaulings Fine Art, Emily Sundblad fluidly performs different identities. In her work, advertisements, souvenirs, floral arrangements and songs participate in a web of commerce as artworks only by declaring its value.

Recent exhibitions include: Galerie Neu, Berlin (2019); House of Gaga, Mexico City (2019); Xavier Hufkens, Brussels (2017); The Kitchen, New York (2016); Le Consortium, Dijon (2014); White Flag Projects, St. Louis (2013); Off Ven-dome, Düsseldorf (2013). Her work was featured in Double Lives, MUMOK, Vienna (2019) and was part of the Whitney Biennial (2014).
Her recent exhibitions include: Galerie Neu, Berlin (2019); El Beso, House of Gaga, Mexico City (2019); Charline, Xavier Hufkens, Brussels (2017); Emily Sundblad: Dichterliebe/Divine Bitches, The Kitchen, New York (2016); The ALMANAC 14: Emily Sundblad, Charles Ray, Le Consortium, Dijon (2014); Absolut, White Flag Projects, St. Louis (2013); Emily Sundblad/Margaret Lee, Off Vendome, Düsseldorf (2013). Her work was featured in Double Lives, MUMOK, Vienna (2019) and was part of the Whitney Biennial (2014).