Frances Adair McKenzie, Alexia Laferté Coutu, Jérôme Nadeau
Coup de Chaleur

From September 13 to October 26, 2024

Galerie Nicolas Robert is pleased to present Coup de Chaleur, an exhibition of works by Frances Adair McKenzie, Alexia Laferté Coutu, and Jérôme Nadeau.

Coup de chaleur was born through a series of conversations between Frances Adair McKenzie, Alexia Laferté Coutu, and Jérôme Nadeau, which highlighted the conceptual framing and intersections between their current practices and research. Although distinct, the practices of these three artists intertwine in dynamics of transfer and transformation. Their works arise from a process of continuous reconfiguration, where each element becomes both an imprint and a mutation, both surface and depth. Their approaches can be seen as archaeologies of the present, excavations of the visible that do not seek to unearth a fixed past but to expose layers of a temporality in motion. The past infiltrates the present, constantly recomposing itself in a flow of material and symbolic interactions.

The exhibition explores through converging approaches how bodies, whether human, architectural, or technological, reinvent and respond to each other. The intertwining of the works in the space creates a subtle interplay of correspondences and shifts. The production processes of the three artists blur the lines between the organic and the mechanical, the corporeal and the abstract, drawing the viewer into an uncertain yet fertile reading. The works resemble foreign bodies, in perpetual negotiation with their own materiality and narrative. Holding states of becoming, places of transition where form and content are constantly being reformulated.

Rather than presenting a linear or univocal discourse, the artists engage the remnants of vision, an excavation of the layers of meaning that compose our relationship with the world. The malleability of materials and technologies becomes an instrument of revelation, capturing the tensions of time and its traces. The works emerge as fragments; specters that do not simply want to be seen but demand to be unfolded, read as signs of a reality in perpetual mutation.