Galerie Nathalie Obadia is pleased to present Victoria Palacios’ first solo exhibition in Paris. The French artist lives and works in Brussels, where she studied painting and performance. Also active internationally as a musician and performer, she has developed a practice in which painting becomes a space for theatrical staging. Following Des signes, des scènes, her exhibition at the gallery in Brussels in 2024, she unveils a new body of nearly fifty works in which figures, costumes, materials and props proliferate, like remnants of a theatre still inhabited by its performers.
Within this meticulously orchestrated universe, perspectives multiply: from backstage, onstage or in the audience, each vantage point gives rise to a different narrative. A drum kit stands waiting, poised to set the rhythm for a celebration yet to unfold.Temporalities intertwine, leaving us uncertain whether we are witnessing the opening moments of a performance, its climax or its final scenes.
Animal creatures, spectral figures and other silhouettes of uncertain identity coexist in a profusion of paintings that extend beyond the traditional confines of the canvas, finding their way onto books and even slices of bread. Though fixed upon their supports, these presences appear to come alive, collide and at times merge, their contours shifting through successive metamorphoses. Victoria Palacios works precisely within this indeterminate space, where forms are continually reinvented: a bird’s wing becomes tulle, a body dissolves into a ghostly presence, plumage turns to fur. In these transformations, imbued with a Surrealist sensibility, echoes of Leonora Carrington’s enigmatic bestiary occasionally emerge.
These transformations extend into the very substance of the painting. The artist revisits her works until the final moment, scraping, painting over and diluting, allowing traces of earlier gestures to surface beneath successive layers. Through this process of revision and erasure, something of the performative gesture endures, now inscribed within the temporality of painting. The paint is at times delicate, almost translucent, at others thick and generous, spilling beyond the contours of the figures. From one canvas to the next, protagonists reappear, assuming different roles or costumes, as though each painting retained the memory of those that came before.
The chromatic palette further articulates this ambivalence. Some images, rendered in darker tones, seem to belong to a bygone era; others burst forth in more vivid colours, as though freshly brought into being. Draped in layers of fabric, a widow holds an object resembling a biniou, a traditional Breton bagpipe, a recurring motif in Victoria Palacios’ work that returns like a refrain. Traditionally played at both festive gatherings and funeral ceremonies, the instrument seems to accompany the figure’s grief, while beneath her veils she already carries the promise of renewal. Elsewhere, a clown’s smile hovers between laughter and dread. Ribbons adorn the figures even as they constrain them, while the swans’ feathers caress and envelop as much as they suffocate. “Struggle can take the form of a dance, and an embrace that of a confrontation,” observes Victoria Palacios. Elsewhere still, “black swans” emerge, heralding another upheaval.
The gaze occupies a central place in these compositions. Eyes sometimes assume disproportionate dimensions, emerging even from the backgrounds. “The walls seem saturated with gazes,” observes Victoria Palacios. Playing with the positioning of bodies and shifts in scale, the artist constructs a universe in which each figure seems to seek its place, exposing itself or withdrawing from view. She speaks of her paintings as though they were people, some appearing to her more “photogenic” than others.
Beneath the splendour of appearances, the costumes no longer entirely conceal those who wear them. Laughter, dread, panic and tenderness mingle under a harsh, unforgiving light, in which even the shadows are laid bare. We, in turn, find ourselves drawn into this human comedy, confronted with presences from which it becomes difficult to avert our gaze.
— Marie Chappaz
