Mae Alphonse Dessauvage at Tatjana Pieters

Artist: Mae Alphonse Dessauvage

Exhibition title: Oh the Ripe Air!

Venue: Tatjana Pieters, Ghent, Belgium

Date: September 11 – October 23, 2022

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Tatjana Pieters

‘Oh the Ripe Air!’ is Ghent and New York-based artist Mae Alphonse Dessauvage’s (BE, 1995) first solo exhibition in Belgium. The exhibition includes new panel paintings and sculptures which, through the depiction of figures in teetering atmospheres, contend with the unstable meaning of iconography.

The exhibited series of shaped panel paintings depict intimate scenes based on art historical imagery. Urns, pyxes, orbs, recurring motifs within the artist’s oeuvre, appear to feminine figures who are introspective yet fixated on these external objects. With hesitant glances, timid expressions, and delicate gestures, the androgynous bodies seem lost in planar spaces of ambiguous depths. Drawn directly and painted flatly with little embellishment, the works emphasize the planes of paint in relation to the architectural framing. In the exhibited sculptural works – part of Dessauvage’s ongoing reliquary series – the dynamic between image, narrative and form is projected three-dimensionally into an architectural object.

Partly inspired by early Renaissance iconography, Dessauvage’s work evokes the tender frescoes of artists such as Giotto and Piero Della Francesca. The subject matter and vocabulary however depart from traditional iconography; instead, the artist has created a personal lexicon of symbols that abstracts those of art history. In some works, such as ‘Composition (figure with branch and red hand),’ recognizable themes are transplanted, gaining new meaning. Here, the artist has transformed the conventional annunciation scene into an uncertain encounter with a hidden figure. By separating iconographic imagery from its theological role, Dessauvage creates an intimate psychological space with an open-ended meaning rather than a stable one.

Dessauvage’s fascination with decontextualizing iconography reflects the Belgian-Iranian artist’s split upbringing in Bruges and suburban America. For them, their practice is a tool to explore their own precarious relationship to history, culture, and gender. Imbued with personal dysphoria, the work speaks to a universal loss of meaning.

Mae Alphonse Dessauvage, Oh the Ripe Air!, 2022, exhibition view, Tatjana Pieters, Ghent

Mae Alphonse Dessauvage, Composition (figure with red church), 2022, Gouache, graphite, colored pencil on board, 17 3/10 x 10 3/5 in 44 x 27 cm

Mae Alphonse Dessauvage, Portrait (figure with black pyx), 2021, Gouache, acrylic, graphite, coloured pencil on board, 10 3/5 × 7 3/10 in, 27 × 18.5 cm

Mae Alphonse Dessauvage, Orb and Hand, 2021, Gouache, acrylic, graphite, coloured pencil on board, 40 3/5 × 23 3/5 in, 103 × 60 cm

Mae Alphonse Dessauvage, Reliquary I, 2021, Gouache, graphite, aluminum, hardboard, 26 2/5 × 15 7/10 × 11 4/5 in, 67 × 40 × 30 cm

Mae Alphonse Dessauvage, Composition (figure with lily), 2021, Gouache, acrylic, graphite, coloured pencil on board, 29 7/10 × 10 4/5 in, 75.5 × 27.5 cm