smooth like an alibi
Loup Sarion

Opening on saturday, February 17th at 11am
From February 17th until March 31st

In the artist’s first solo show with the gallery, Sarion presents a new body of sculptural and collage work, taking the anthropomorphic form as a starting point. The title smooth like an alibi, refers to the subtlety of language as well as the mystery and intrigue that arise from the utterance of an excuse. Tongues recall memories of teenage love, the moment of the kiss, the sensuality of that first oral relation. Thirsty tongues call on liquids of desire from another time lived.

Loup Sarion’s practice reveals a liminal zone between painting and sculpture where color is subsumed by material. The complexity of the works’ overlapping textures relate to the slippery nature of language, and further of the tongue— the organ of language. The consideration of color, surface and texture echoes condensation,  the sweating  skin, and bodily fluids. Just as these fluids come from within our bodies, color and texture of lower layers arise from the surface of the sculptures and become visible.

In his collages, Sarion investigates the ways that touch can be considered as a way of relating to others; a new tactile language. Sensitive to misinterpretation, as when using a foreign language in an improper but poetic way, or in a Freudian Slip, these works reveal what our minds try to hold and our tongues let escape.

smooth like an alibi understands language as texture, questioning what we embrace when we speak and how we express that physically. To speak by touching and to touch by speaking; mutual affection of different communicative forms simultaneously. All forms of communication situated one beside the other, as the feminist thinker Eve K. Sedgwick posits. She encourages us to discover with her textural approach to language, implying the necessity of affective and discursive practices capable of constructing a non-dualistic thinking.
The synesthesia of perceiving and feeling becomes evident with the repetition of a single pattern. An essential variation in the practice of Sarion, we are invited to participate in a sensorial game that touches us and, in a second reading, allows us to see a suggested and transitory reality; What is the relationship between seeing and touching? When does a touch stay with us? 


Lara Molina

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Loup Sarion (1987, Toulouse, France) studied at Beaux Arts in Paris (2010-2015) and Cooper Union, New York (2013).

Some of his recent exhibitions are: Langue Pendue, SpazioA, Pistoia, Italia (solo show); Vein Section, Berthold Pott Gallery, Colonia, Alemania (cur. Thomas Caron); Le nouveau monde industriel, Galleria Continua, Les Moulins, FR; (cur. Nicolas Bourriaud); humidity, Galerie Jeanrochdard, Brussels, Belgium (solo show); Les lèvres nues, DOC, Paris; I cut out the mug and went to the bottle, EXOEXO, Paris.

The artist lives and works in New York.

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¹ Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Adam Frank (2003). “Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity”, (trad. Maria José Belbel), p.8, Duke University Press

smooth like an alibi, English text by Madeleine Braun