Ballon Rouge Collective | MARIE JACOTEY: YOU PINNED ME DOWN LIKE A BUTTERFLY ON THE WALL
Press Release
Ballon Rouge Collective is pleased to announce its second project in New York. Marie Jacotey’s “you pinned me down like a butterfly on the wall,” curated by Kathy Battista will inhabit a space at 57 Orchard Street on the Lower East Side for two weeks. This will mark Jacotey’s first exhibition in the States. Greek and French by birth, she has been a mainstay of the UK art world since her days at the Royal College of Art.
The intimacy of the gallery space at 57 Orchard creates the perfect context for Jacotey’s work, which always makes the viewer want to get a bit closer. Known for her colored pencil drawings that most often feature female protagonists, alone or with others, at times with accompanying text. These text and image pieces tell a decidedly sardonic 21 st century female narrative, but are stylistically closer to the west coast punk aesthetics of Raymond Pettibone or Mike Kelley. Focused on personal relationships—breakups, seduction, affairs, friendship, family dynamics—Jacotey confronts the autobiographical with a wry sense of humor and irony. In addition to her work on paper, Jacotey’s drawings have been collated into large scale textile installations. Currently, she is also experimenting with collaborative filmmaking in the form of animation.
For Jacotey’s exhibition in New York, she will show a recent body of work that reflects a new direction in both medium and subject matter: in addition to colored pencils she has been working with dry pastels, and an increasing role of pattern and floral motifs populate the drawings. These may be read in the progression of her earlier subject matter, however, as floral motifs and patterns are almost always associated with the feminine. “You pinned me down like a butterfly on the wall” features both works on paper as well as smaller textile drawings. For example, fleurs in da sky, Fleurette, and Fleures Hystero in da sky do not feature her trademark human figures; rather they depict flowers whose linear stalks might be read as anthropomorphic. As the flowers overlap in fleurs in da sky one can envision two people--lovers or friends--in intimate conversation. Floating over blue backgrounds with areas suggestive of clouds these new works recall untrained or outsider artists in their simplicity, confidence, and honesty.
Curator Kathy Battista says “I’m fascinated by the way that Jacotey works so intuitively. Her exploration of the personal experience is a contemporary take on the 1970s activist slogan: the ‘personal is political’. I love that her work engages the DIY notion of earlier feminist artists, but with her unique, inimitable style, and content relevant to our world today. I’m very excited to share her work with a New York audience.”
Ballon Rouge Collective is a nomadic gallery. Since opening in September 2017 B.R.Collective has traveled to and put up exhibitions in Istanbul, London, Los Angeles, Brussels, Sao Paulo, Paris, and New York. Each of the cities we visit is stewarded by a collective member. They are our ambassador to their city and the curator of the show there. Each artist we represent travels with us, ultimately working with all of our collective members internationally. While we remain a nomadic gallery, we now also have a permanent space in Brussels, Ballon Rouge Club. An extension of the Collective, B.R.Club is likewise not your typical gallery. Other spaces, non-profits, curators, and initiatives will be invited to show at the Club, and sometimes we will curate our own exhibitions there. With those invited to the Club the goal is to have a symbiotic relationship, creating an exchange that will give artists further international exposure; their artists will show at our Club and our artists will show at their space, where-ever that may be. Each show will take a different form and will depend on the collaborations that are possible.