About
I’m rather fond of the idea that things appear from the moment they are deformed, in the play between what is identical and different, between repetition, alteration, and renewal—like the movement my voice makes in its journey in front of the mountain’s belly, which allows me to measure the architecture of the mountain.
—Tatiana Trouvé
In her large-scale drawings, cast and carved sculptures, and site-specific installations, Tatiana Trouvé assesses the relationship between memory and material, pitting the ceaseless flow of time against the remarkable endurance of common objects. By pushing the very definitions of “copy,” “echo,” and “image,” she invents, even inhabits, environments that straddle studio, street, landscape, and dream.
Trouvé was born in Cosenza, Italy, and spent her childhood and early teenage years in Dakar. After graduating from the Villa Arson, Nice, France, in 1989, she moved to the Netherlands to the Ateliers 63 in Haarlem for two years. In 1994, she moved to Paris, eventually establishing her studio in Montreuil, a historically industrial suburb on the eastern periphery of the city. In 1997, while searching for a job, she began the project Bureau d’activités implicites (Bureau of Implicit Activities) (1997–2007), in which she displayed her personal documents in architectural “modules,” interspersing them with invented résumés and other fictionalized papers. This experiment in crafting and comprehending identity through a bureaucratic lens, a foundation for Trouvé’s archival impulse, allowed her to accumulate a vast collection of images and small objects that are referenced in her drawings and sculptures. In the sculptural series Polders (2000–), Trouvé scales up objects and interiors, yet often implements windows or mirrors that prevent the viewer from getting physically into the spaces. Thus, while accumulated documents reveal the fictions of identity formation in Bureau d’activités implicites, in Polders, physical limitations alienate the mind and body from seemingly familiar interiors.
Trouvé’s drawings have always been deeply intertwined with her sculptural work. Often, she projects visual fragments from the studio or from her personal archive of found and original images onto the picture plane, capturing them there in graphite to create richly detailed two-dimensional realms. In the series Intranquillity (2005–), whose title refers to Fernando Pessoa’s 1982 Book of Disquiet (Intranquillité in the French translation), Trouvé experiments with different modes of spatiotemporal shifting. The works comprising the series Remanence (Afterglow) (2008–), drawn in black graphite on black paper, reveal the surprises and the inconsistencies of memory, considering the liminal space between waking and dreaming. A similar relationship exists between the series Les dessouvenus (The unremembered) (2013–) and The Great Atlas of Disorientation (2019–). To make the former, Trouvé plunges large sheets of colored paper into bleach, allowing the boundaries of each stain to provide a loose structure for complex “environmental dramas” that she then draws in pencil. To create the latter, she uses watercolor, ink, or linseed oil to defamiliarize the compositional structures of Les dessouvenus.
Photo: Hélène Pambrun
#TatianaTrouve
Exhibitions
Tatiana Trouvé: Le grand atlas de la désorientation
In this video, Tatiana Trouvé provides an overview of her latest installation, presented at the Centre Pompidou, Paris. The exhibition, whose title translates to The Great Atlas of Disorientation, includes a selection of drawings and sculptures that create fantastical landscapes where reality engages in infinite exchanges with its doubles.
In Conversation
Tatiana Trouvé and Jean-Michel Geneste
Tatiana Trouvé speaks with Jean-Michel Geneste, archaeologist and curator, about the paradoxes of her practice: absence and presence, the ancient and the contemporary, the natural and the human-made.
Tatiana Trouvé: The Residents
Tatiana Trouvé discusses her installation The Residents (2021), commissioned by Artangel for the exhibition Afterness on Orford Ness, a former military testing site in Suffolk, England
Behind the Art
Tatiana Trouvé: In the Studio
Join the artist in her studio as she speaks about her new series of drawings, From March to May. Trouvé describes the genesis of the project and the essential role its creation played in keeping her connected with the outside world during the difficult months of pandemic-related lockdown.
Bourse de Commerce
William Middleton traces the development of the new institution, examining the collaboration between the collector François Pinault and the architect Tadao Ando in revitalizing the historic space. Middleton also speaks with artists Tatiana Trouvé and Albert Oehlen about Pinault’s passion as a collector, and with the Bouroullec brothers, who created design features for the interiors and exteriors of the museum.
Tatiana Trouvé: From March to May
A portfolio of the artist’s drawings made during lockdown. Text by Jesi Khadivi.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2020
The Winter 2020 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Jenny Saville’s Prism (2020) on its cover.
Tatiana Trouvé: In Time
In upstate New York, Jenny Jaskey discovers Tatiana Trouvé’s Between sky and earth. Begun in 2012, this multifaceted installation exists as a crucial nexus in the artist’s career, both a result of her ongoing practice and a generative source for continuing investigations.
Before the Smoke Has Cleared
Angela Brown provides a glimpse into the charged ecologies of recent drawings and sculptures by Tatiana Trouvé. These works will be included in On the Eve of Never Leaving, Trouvé’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, opening in November 2019.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Fall 2019
The Fall 2019 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring a detail from Sinking (2019) by Nathaniel Mary Quinn on its cover.
Trouvé and Grosse: Villa Medici
Tatiana Trouvé and Katharina Grosse discuss their exhibition Le numerose irregolarità, at the French Academy in Rome, Villa Medici, with curator Chiara Parisi.
Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2018
The Spring 2018 Gagosian Quarterly with a cover by Ed Ruscha is now available for order.
Fairs, Events & Announcements
Exhibition
Tatiana Trouvé in
Panorama L’Aquila
September 7–10, 2023
Various locations in L’Aquila, Italy
italics.art
Panorama L’Aquila, curated by Cristiana Perrella, brings together works by more than sixty-two international artists presented by different galleries whose focuses range from the fourteenth century to contemporary. The exhibition takes place in twenty venues across L’Aquila—the provincial capital of the Abruzzo region, known for its green national parks and towns located on dramatic cliff faces—including in historical buildings, palaces, courtyards, and public spaces, as well as museums and other institutions. This is the third in a series of Panorama exhibitions organized by ITALICS, a consortium of art galleries active in Italy cofounded by Lorenzo Fiaschi and Pepi Marchetti Franchi that work together, both on- and offline, to highlight Italy’s extraordinary cultural and artistic heritage. Work by Tatiana Trouvé is included, exhibited in the Palazzo Rivera.
Tatiana Trouvé, Untitled, 2022, from the series, Les dessouvenus, 2013–, installation view, Palazzo Rivera, L’Aquila, Italy, September 7–10, 2023. Artwork © Tatiana Trouvé. Photo: Alessio Tamborini
Art Fair
Art Basel Hong Kong 2023
March 22–25, 2023
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre
www.artbasel.com
Gagosian is pleased to participate in Art Basel Hong Kong 2023 with a presentation of modern and contemporary works by international artists.
Jadé Fadojutimi, As usual, the season’s showers tend to linger, 2023 © Jadé Fadojutimi
Art Fair
ART SG 2023
January 12–15, 2023, booth BF05
Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre, Singapore
artsg.com
Gagosian is pleased to announce the gallery’s participation in the inaugural edition of ART SG, with a selection of works by international contemporary artists including Banksy, Georg Baselitz, Ashley Bickerton, Edmund de Waal, Helen Frankenthaler, Katharina Grosse, Mark Grotjahn, Damien Hirst, Howard Hodgkin, Thomas Houseago, Tetsuya Ishida, Alex Israel, Jia Aili, Harmony Korine, Takashi Murakami, Nam June Paik, Giuseppe Penone, Ed Ruscha, Spencer Sweeney, Sarah Sze, Tatiana Trouvé, Anna Weyant, Jonas Wood, and Zeng Fanzhi.
Gagosian’s booth at ART SG 2023. Artwork, left to right: © Ashley Bickerton; © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2022; © Banksy; © Zeng Fanzhi; © 2020 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All rights reserved. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Museum Exhibitions
On View
Tatiana Trouvé in
Power Up: Imaginaires techniques et utopies sociales
Through May 12, 2024
Le Grand Café—Centre d’art contemporain, Saint-Nazaire, France
www.grandcafe-saintnazaire.fr
This exhibition, whose subtitle translates to Technical Imaginaries and Social Utopias, considers energy infrastructures and their state of disrepair within the context of the global ecological crisis. Focusing on a female perspective, Power Up, which includes works by eighteen artists and architects, puts forward a new history of technology and suggests the need for a radical rethink in our approach to the world around us. Work by Tatiana Trouvé is included.
Installation view, Power Up: Imaginaires techniques et utopies sociales, Le Grand Café—Centre d’art contemporain, Saint-Nazaire, France, February 8–May 12, 2024. Artwork, left to right: © Mierle Laderman Ukeles, © Tatiana Trouvé, © Laura Lamiel. Photo: Marc Domage
On View
Rewilding
Through August 18, 2024
Kunsthaus Baselland, Münchenstein/Basel, Switzerland
kunsthausbaselland.ch
Rewilding is the inaugural exhibition of the Kunsthaus Baselland in its new space, a former champagne warehouse. The exhibition’s title refers to the “rebirth” of the venue, and the artists included in the show, many of whom have exhibited with the museum before, have created new works for the opening. Work by Piero Golia and Tatiana Trouvé is included.
Tatiana Trouvé, Untitled, 2022, from the series Les dessouvenus, 2013– © Tatiana Trouvé. Photo: Florian Kleinefenn
Closed
Togetherness
For Better or Worse
October 7, 2023–January 21, 2024
Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas
www.greenfamilyartfoundation.org
Togetherness: For Better or Worse explores the intricate and multifaceted dynamics of personhood and connection in thirty-eight works by thirty-five artists. The exhibition examines humanity at its foundations, considering beauty and pain and the moments they unite. Work by Thomas Houseago, Tatiana Trouvé, and Jonas Wood is included.
Tatiana Trouvé, The Guardian, 2022 © Tatiana Trouvé
Closed
Storie di pietra
October 13, 2023–January 14, 2024
Villa Medici–Académie de France à Rome
www.villamedici.it
This exhibition, whose title translates to Stories of Stones, brings together nearly two hundred works, from the oldest terrestrial mineral dating back 4.4 billion years to the latest mineral, Sentimentite, created by contemporary artist Agnieszka Kurant. The exhibition explores the idea that stones have inspired artists from all eras. Work by Damien Hirst, Henry Moore, Giuseppe Penone, Pablo Picasso, and Tatiana Trouvé is included.
Tatiana Trouvé, Rock, 2007 © Tatiana Trouvé. Photo: Philippe Migeat