New Commission

Two years after participating in the museum’s opening exhibition, Ser Serpas was invited to occupy Gallery 3 for her first solo show at the Bourse de Commerce. The artist completed a new series of paintings for this occasion: six large canvases that hang from a curved metal rod, as if they were still drying. As is always the case for this artist, the canvases are unframed, and the supple nature of the medium and the painted forms and colours combine to produce an assemblage that changes with each installation. This ensemble echoes the sculptures partially covered with white sheets that were located elsewhere in the gallery space. 

The larger format of these canvases represent an evolution in Ser Serpas’ approach to her painting that lies between abstraction and figuration, in which the framing closes in on fragments of bodies to the point of dissolving their greyish flesh. The anonymous intimacy of these representations and the most abstract of patterns were combined with the recovery of objects about to be discarded. They reconfigured the gallery space into a fantastical, ghostly site haunted even for Serpas herself. “I feel like a ghost”, the artist has said. 

This installation was shown for the first time during Ser Serpas’ exhibition I fear (j’ai peur) at the Bourse de Commerce — Pinault Collection from 20 September 2023 to 22 January 2024.