Julien Ceccaldi at COOPER COLE, Toronto

COOPER COLE is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Julien Ceccaldi. Titled Celebu-Spawn, this marks the artist’s first show with the gallery as well as his first solo exhibition in Canada.

The summer the French Revolution begins, Prince Louis-Joseph dies of tuberculosis at seven years old. He is spared from having to face the wrath of the people, unlike his younger brother Louis-Charles. Separated from his mother, the second Dauphin is psychologically conditioned into becoming a commoner, and forced to sign a false letter accusing her of abuse. The child’s deposition serves as the ultimate pretext for her trial and public execution by guillotine.

Months later, he lies in bed malnourished and ill. The ten-year-old boy murmurs to his jailer that he heard beautiful music and saw his mother, and passes away from tuberculosis, as his older sibling did years earlier. Like a budding rose set on fire, his promised life of elegance ends as ashes from the blaze of history.

During the autopsy, a royalist physician slices Louis-Charles’ heart out in secret, and slips it into his coat pocket while the body is thrown into a mass grave. Preserved in a crystal jar filled with wine, the mummified heart changes hands for two centuries until DNA tests confirm its authenticity in 2000, and it can finally be interred alongside the bones of his brother and parents in the royal crypt.

For two hundred years, the heart of the Prince exists as both relic and evidence. What survives is not the prince himself, but the story of splendour cut short. Hidden from the authorities, and passed secretly from thief to archbishop and dukes, the organ calcifies over time as the alcohol evaporates. Protected in its glass casket, the shrivelled heart has become an impenetrable stone full of memories, suspended in time.

Julien Ceccaldi (b. 1987, Montreal, Quebec, Canada) is an artist whose paintings and drawings depict androgynous characters influenced by Shoujo manga, including The Rose of Versailles, known as Lady Oscar in France and Quebec. Exploring themes of intimacy, aspiration, and freedom, Ceccaldi’s work finds moments of hope and humour within macabre and unsettling situations, such as the quest for love within patriarchal structures.

Ceccaldi received a BFA from Concordia University, Montreal, and has exhibited in galleries since 2007. His work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions at institutions including MoMA PS1 and MoMA, Swiss Institute of Contemporary Art, New York; Kölnischer Kunstverein, Germany; Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Genève, Switzerland; Consortium Museum and Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles, France; and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; amongst many others. His work has also been exhibited extensively at galleries internationally and featured in publications including Artforum and Frieze. Ceccaldi lives and works in New York, USA.