CLAIRE TABOURET

Perrotin Tokyo is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles-based French artist Claire Tabouret. On view is a new series of intimate portraits of herself, created during the lockdown. For her first solo show in Tokyo, the artist has shifted her gaze inward with a new body of work titled “Lockdown Self-portraits”. Tabouret often focuses on the relationship between two or more figures in her work, but the lack of gatherings in today’s world has altered her focus to the dynamics between herself and the viewer.

Self-Portrait in a Robe (green); Acrylic and ink on paper; Unframed: 142 x 108 cm; Photographer: Marten Elder. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin

Self-portraiture has been a significant part of the artist’s practice for nearly a decade, but the involuntary isolation of our current reality compelled Tabouret to use herself as a subject out of necessity. Pointing to the influence of Helene Schjerfbeck‘s very intimate self-portraits which were often made when no other models were available in the secluded Finnish countryside where she lived, Tabouret reflects that, “it was in this very natural way that I began painting myself, because the urgency to paint is always there, no matter what”.

Self-Portrait at the table; Acrylic on canvas; 100 x 81 x 2 cm; Photographer: Marten Elder. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin

Elements such as makeup and costumes frequently serve as a kind of armor for the figures in Tabouret‘s works -masking certain parts of them from the viewer and allowing them to exhibit a feeling of self-assurance. In these new self-portraits, the sense of fearlessness is diminished if not entirely absent, and the shields in place are more subtle but still present: an oversized robe, a hooded sweatshirt, her dog George placed decisively between herself and the viewer. Vuillard’s masterful interiors are evoked, whose figures are nearly engulfed by the fabrics and patterns in the room. The same feeling is present in Tabouret’s new works; a sense of heaviness but also of the warmth and protection offered by these domestic settings. A thick, striped bathrobe serves as an allusion to Matisse’s Odalisque paintings, while the hooded self-portraits refer back to Zurbarán’s paintings of monks and Gaëtan Gatien de Clérambault’s thousands of photographs of veiled women. These coverings act as a type of refuge, almost like a womb, and represent the temptation of the artist to disappear. In Self-portrait at the Table, the artist’s hands partly obscure her face while her eyes look away, avoiding the viewer. Channeling Manet’s La Prune, Tabouret recalls wanting “to find this special gaze that is looking inward”.

Self-Portrait with a Hood (pink); Acrylic on panel; 76 x 51 x 3.5 cm; Photographer: Marten Elder. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin

Portrait of Claire Tabouret by Guillaume Ziccarelli. Courtesy of the artist