bâiller au nez de l’anecdote

Arpaïs Du Bois

29/05/2025

12/07/2025

Gallery FIFTY ONE

Gallery FIFTY ONE is thrilled to announce new exhibition of Arpaïs Du Bois. In this exhibition of recent works (2024–2025) on paper and wood, Arpaïs Du Bois—fully in line with her decades-long investigation into the relationship between word and image, sound and color, meaning and composition, support and materiality—further deepens her role as observer and narrator.

Notably, the tone in these new works may seem more forgiving than in previous exhibitions, but that is merely a strategy to place greater emphasis on the themes that both nourish and unsettle her: the short-term vision of world leaders and voters, the increasing uninhabitability of our planet, and our apathy in the face of it all, to name just a few. Alongside these, she weaves in ‘smaller’ yet universal subjects such as how we relate to one another and to all living beings, deep feelings of loss, and (vain) hope. She also turns her gaze toward beauty and the tragicomic nature of life.

All of this is conveyed in a language that is sensitive and poignant—words that do not nail things down, do not impose, but instead leave space for dialogue and introspection. She deliberately avoids the anecdotal, both in the imagery she evokes and in the language she uses. More than ever, she feels the need to escape banality and platitude.

She observes and captures our condition humaine, caught between gentleness and sorrow, between irritation and compassion, resignation and revolt.

Her works touch on the ephemeral and the profound, history and sensory experience, contradiction and resistance, playfulness and tenderness, as well as the act of searching itself.

That sense of searching runs like a thread throughout her practice. The color palette of this exhibition appears more subdued than in her recent shows. While we still recognize the energy of her previously vivid works, it is as if a new veil has been cast over the colors—more muted, yet equally sharp and incisive in tone.

Du Bois continues to explore the (exhibition) space with both two-dimensional works and wall-based objects. While her earlier spatial interventions leaned more towards the architectural, she now delves fully into the thresholds between two- and three-dimensionality. Wall objects and sculptural pieces engage in a dynamic play with the wall, the space, and the surface itself—constantly referencing one another as their content shifts between plane and volume, between word and matter, between stillness and presence.

In works such as “décoincer les conventions”, “malgré l’obscurité annoncée”, “perspective en friche”, “des semences à conséquences” and “la masse malade”, Du Bois addresses urgent social and political questions with striking clarity.

At the same time, she allows for a more playful, ironic tone in works like “faute de lignes droites on adopte les courbes” or “panier à presque rien”, where her trademark sharp humor surfaces—often subtly, but always precisely.

And then there are the more poetic, introspective works, such as “se cramponner à la vie qui tangue”, “des bosses de douceur”, “pouvoir chanter l’autre”, “or “à l’orage comme au chagrin”, in which Du Bois fully surrenders to tenderness, melancholy, and reflection.

Across all these approaches—the critical, the playful, the intimate—you feel her deep engagement with the world, and at the same time, her need to withdraw from it. Not out of indifference, but from a desire to understand, to imagine, to translate. To find a place within it, to be a part of it.

Arpaïs Du Bois

Arpaïs Du Bois approaches man’s being-in-the-world in a very personal and intimate way. Her drawings and texts are at the same time sharp and ambiguous; playful and poetic observations of the world that surrounds her. Out of an intense involvement, she reflects on societal issues, big and small, and the often unnoticed moments and events that shape our lives. Amidst the abundance of impressions that come to us every day, Du Bois’s drawings create a moment of stillness and reflection. They are often syntheses of images, expressing as much as possible with a minimum of resources. They offer the viewer a resting point, a way to frame the chaotic reality.

The content of Du Bois’s exhibitions is generally provided in the form of pages torn from her drawing books arranged in novel constellations, combined with mid-scale and large-scale drawings and paintings on paper.