We are pleased to announce the opening of Fabrice Cazenave’s (Fr. 1975) second solo exhibition with the gallery.

Renowned for immaculate charcoal renderings of plantlife and microbial detail, Cazenave has also produced an extensive body of work under self-hypnosis, often making marks with dots and dashes that reflect his internal responses to external energies.

Following an extended September trip from Paris to the gardens of Charleston Farmhouse in Sussex, Cazenave has utilised both techniques for two parallel series of work, both of which will be shown at the gallery, as well as a specially commissioned wall drawing, and new jacquard work. The first of these series are drawings of classical busts that line the walls of the garden at Charleston, but seen from behind as they guard the garden (see image above). Cazenave has linked these busts with four key characters from Virginia Woolf’s Modernist prose poem The Waves. The second body of work features much looser hypnosis-induced ‘aveugle’ drawing, over colour washes that refer to the late, September blooms in the garden - anemones, asters, tritonia and artichoke.

The prescience and legacy of the Bloomsbury Group’s fluid gender politics and open-mindedness have long been a source of interest to Cazenave. Their intertwining of art and craft is also now a commonality within contemporary art.

“I hold a stalk in my hand. I am the stalk. My roots go down to the depths of the world, through earth dry with brick, and damp earth, through veins of lead and silver.” Extract from The Waves by Virginia Woolf

Blooming Body opens Jan 11th and runs through February 22nd.