Charlotte Houette
She renders mesmerizing expanses of contorted grids and indeterminate whorls that confound conventional modes of spatial perception; by manipulating the warp and weft of wavy two-tone checkerboards or the amplitude and velocity of marbled striations, Houette construes variables of form and substance as vectors in flux. Her paintings thus evoke a kinetic dimensionality at odds with the horizontal stability of the picture plane. This apparent paradox is intensified by the presence of rectilinear cutouts at the center of each canvas, which serve as anchors that focus the viewer’s gaze and further complicate the painting’s tension between surface and structure.
For years, windows have functioned as an indelible compositional element in Houette’s oeuvre. In her recent works, these apertures operate as trapdoors—false thresholds that give way to more of the same hallucinatory visual convolutions that cover the painting’s primary plane. Up close, however, they reveal a novel contrivance that fundamentally alters the artwork’s presumed permanence as a fixed object and unchangeable entity. These secondary surfaces that appear beneath each painting’s central opening are incised with several parallel slits, through which additional strips of painted canvas are woven to create sliding screens that Houette freely manipulates to conceal or expose individual layers of the surrounding painting. In so doing, she acknowledges the contradictory cognitive modalities that arise from perceptual divergences inherent in the artwork itself. Such slippages not only lend Houette’s works their beguiling hypnotic charm but also compel viewers to reassess differentiations of object and image that operate in opposition to the simultaneity of contemporary ways of seeing.
Charlotte Houette was born in 1983 in Chambray-les-Tours, France. She lives and works in Paris, France. Recent solo exhibitions include: High Art, Arles, France; Cocotte, Treignac, France; South Studio, LUMA Foundation, Arles, France; Treignac Project, Treignac, France; CAC Bretigny, Bretigny, France. Recent group exhibitions include: Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, Arles, France; Champ Lacombe, Biarritz, France; Frac Poitou-Charente, Angoulême; Les Bains Douches, Alençon; Tonus, Paris, France; La Tôlerie, Clermont Ferrand; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France.
Selected Works
Exhibitions
Curriculum Vitæ
Lives and works in Paris, France
SOLO AND DUO EXHIBITIONS
2023
Unbirthday, High Art, Arles, France
2021
Baby Horses, Cocotte, Treignac, France
Peintures In Situ, South Studio, LUMA Foundation, Arles, France
2020
Captain D case Fog, Treignac Project, Treignac, France
2018
Charlotte Houette, CAC Bretigny, Bretigny, France
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2023
L’Atelier du Sud, Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, Arles, France
Baroque, Champ Lacombe, Biarritz, France
Plastic Stars, Tara Downs, New York, USA
other people’s clothing, gr_und, Berlin, Germany
2022
Sous le velours noir des paupières, Frac Poitou-Charente, Angoulême, France
Elephant’s Leg, Tonus, Paris, France
Other People’s Clothing, Les Bains Douches, Alençon, France
2021
Paris Internationale with After 8 books, Paris, France
Uplift of lucifer, The Community, Hotel Normandy, Paris, France
2020
Your friends and neighbors, High Art, Paris, France
2019
Group Show, Tonus, Paris, France
Garland, Treignac Projet, Treignac, France
Let’s Play House, The Cheapest University, Treignac Project, Treignac, France
Les jours de pleine lune, Les Peintres, La Tôlerie, Clermont-Ferrand, France
2018
Waiting To Speak, Treignac Project, Treignac, France
Videobox # 5 : The Cheapest University, Le Carreau du Temple, Paris, France
2017
On ne choisit pas sa famille, Cocotte, Paris, France
La Lune est le rêve du soleil, The Cheapest University, Le Carreau du Temple, Paris, France
La Classe Fantôme, The Cheapest University, Treignac Project, Treignac,France
2016
Madame X, La villa Belleville, Paris, France
2015
Recto Verso, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France
2014
Du pain et des Jeux, École Supérieure d’art de Bretagne, Rennes, France
Black Coffee, PARISLA, Paris, France
Plus Jamais Seul II, Kandinsky Library, Paris, France
Plus Jamais Seul I, Standards, Rennes, France
The blind hang out, The Office Box, New York, USA
Plus Jamais seul, Standards, Rennes, France
2013
Les Spiritueuses, Standards, Rennes, France
Desejo e tornado visivel pelo destinatario, Stramonte, Lisbon, Portugal
2012
Vous vous foutez de nous, Biennale de Belleville, Shanaynay, Paris, France
Mobile device, Bodega, Philadelphia, USA
2010
The studio again, Le Moins UN, Paris, France
Tenants, La Fonderie, Paris France
Le Cheval de Troie, CAES, Ris-Orangis, France
2009
Room Scape de Sacha Ackas, Espace Electra, Paris, France
2008
Melancholia, Opéra Granier, Paris, France