Southampton

Produced in large part in Europe over the last two years, Henrot’s work from the series Butter and Bread, Is Today Tomorrow, System of Attachment, and Monday will be shown together for the first time in the United States. These works typify the ambitious and fiercely creative approach that has cemented Henrot—whose practice moves seamlessly between film, painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation—as one of the most influential and unique voices in contemporary art.

In both the System of Attachment (2018-2021) and Monday (2016-2017) series, Henrot’s bronze figures are inspired by the philosophical concept of perpetual becoming. In System of Attachment, Henrot considers the nature of human dependency—from an infant’s earliest bond with its parent to its developmental need to explore––and the myriad ways that the simultaneous need for attachment and separation conditions the relationships throughout our lives.

Henrot’s recent series of paintings titled Butter and Bread (2021) combine digital techniques with gestural brushstrokes to explore abstract expressionist styles. Drawing on her own novice experience with a digital painting application (aptly named Procreate), these works explore the messier aspects of creative production, and reproduction, both in the artist’s practice and in the creation of human life, a recurring motif in her provocative oeuvre.

Created spontaneously at the end of each day during the pandemic’s period of social distancing, the paintings from Henrot’s Is Today Tomorrow (2020-2022) series are akin to diary entries reflecting the specific moments in which they were made. The unifying thread through these works is their square format and apparent random personal content, recalling the look and function of the scrollable images of an Instagram feed and serving as a portrait of an individual life.

Born in 1978 in Paris, France. The artist lives and works between Berlin and New York City.

The practice of French artist Camille Henrot moves seamlessly between film, painting, drawing, bronze, sculpture, and installation. Henrot draws upon references from literature, psychoanalysis, social media, cultural anthropology, self-help, and the banality of everyday life in order to question what it means to be both a private individual and a global subject.

‘Camille Henrot’ is on view now through 31 July 2022 at Hauser & Wirth Southampton.

For more about the exhibition, download the full press release here.