Audrey Guttman, I'll be your mirror : Ketabi Projects - 22, passage Dauphine 75006 Paris
Overview
Audrey Guttman, Lui et moi , 2021
Audrey Guttman, Lui et moi , 2021

Ketabi Projects presents the first exhibition by Belgian artist Audrey Guttman at its new gallery in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district.

Ketabi Projects presents the first exhibition of the artist Audrey Guttman in the walls of its new Parisian gallery, located in the Saint-Germain des Prés district. This exhibition marks both the beginning of the collaboration between the artist and the gallery and the opening of Ketabi Projects towards other artistic scenes, in this case Belgium.
 

Since childhood, Audrey Guttman has always created: writing, painting, drawing... After studying political science, literature and art history, collage came to her as a self-evident fact, as the culmination of her process. By drawing from images that she finds everywhere, by uniting them on the page, she shares her poetic and open universe, her secret and free visions. Inspired by painting, from the Italian Renaissance to Belgian surrealists, but also by her readings, Audrey Guttman urges us to renew our curiosity and ambition, with a desire to see the hidden beauty of a world of renewed possibilities.

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Press release

In the Velvet Underground song “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” singer Nico declares: “When you think the night has seen your mind / That inside you’re twisted and unkind / Let me stand to show that you are blind / Please put down your hands / ‘Cause I see you.” These lyrics resonate at the heart of Audrey Guttman’s work. For her, collage has the same effect as a distorting mirror that, despite everything, sees.

 

Born from an infinite array of pre-existing images—visions torn from old magazines, advertisements, traces of a forgotten past that Audrey Guttman treasures—collage blurs the lines. It allows the artist to disappear, to feel safe. Yet it also serves as a revealer: each work becomes a reflection of an intense inner life. Alternately permeated by emotions, memories, and sensations, the collage stands in contrast to images that are too static, with their defined and limited meanings. It interacts with the image much as a poem interacts with words.

By bringing together seemingly opposing visions—much like a Baudelairean correspondence or synesthesia—the artist opens up meaning; she multiplies it. And she allows the viewer to find a unsettling reflection of themselves within it, to deeply associate it with an emotional state, a secret form, an intimate color. Thus, every viewer will find their own unique and singular connection within it—a glimpse of their inner life, their inner existence—to borrow the expression dear to Michaux, which Audrey Guttman adores—and which, in the collage, is revealed...
 
After trying her hand at every practice and every form of expression—painting, acting, drawing—collage came to Audrey Guttman as a matter of course. First and foremost for its autobiographical dimension. “My identity has never been singular and indivisible,” the artist acknowledges, “the only thing I claim as my own are my own assemblages.” ” She has loved collage, “a modest and humble art, built on trial and error.” Through this intensive practice, the artist rescues these images destined for oblivion. Faced with them, she experiences a mixture of trance and tenderness: Audrey Guttman leafs through them, searching. She senses, she perceives that a certain vision, a certain torn-out page, must be preserved—and not another. A force of certainty washes over her: the image imposes itself on her as if it wanted to survive. So she cuts it out, preserves it. Then she circles the image, twirling before it. She attempts an association, lets it rest, waits patiently. 

Finally, she pastes it down. The next day, she will repeat this act, methodically, like a salvific exorcism or a meticulous choreography.

 

Through the magical power of collage, the image rises from its ashes.

 

This idea of rebirth is the heartbeat of the exhibition “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” as Audrey Guttman confesses: “The planet is burning; the apocalypse is unfolding before our eyes.” To counter the foretold end of the world, the artist reworks Boris Vian’s famous phrase into a magical proposition: “I’ll go spit…” becomes “I’ll go dance on your graves…” And so it is. Her characters dance even amid the rubble, as in *A Dance for the End of the World*, where we seem to see an ambiguous dancer waltzing with a nuclear explosion…

 

The end of the world is also the end of images. Faced with the infinite surplus of images that our retinas are forced to consume every day, faced with this new class struggle long since won by screens, Audrey Guttman’s collages restore meaning to the images buried within us by forcing us to slow down, to take our time, to let ourselves be overwhelmed. For example, she cuts out advertisements in which women’s often-nude bodies were originally used to promote the sale of this or that product. Audrey Guttman reverses their original function: she flips the images before pasting them, thereby revealing what chance has brought to the back of these shots...

Collage becomes her weapon—against the clichéd images of misguided advertising, and against the layers of a social facade that force us to hide our sincere emotions. In *The Other Me*, this duality is evident; the character’s inner self appears far more complex than her presentable exterior... Just like the work *The Dinner Party*, which depicts a woman of respectable appearance, in the midst of a conventional and stereotypical ceremony, seething from within to such an extent that her entire body bursts into flames: she becomes a perpetual blaze. In *L’attente*, the naive posture of another young girl reveals the solidity of a cliff.
 
Audrey Guttman likes to reveal what bodies conceal. She has, in fact, created an entire series of “collages from life” to capture the body in its naked truth. In a drawing studio, facing live models. And in the voguing class at the National Dance Center. She captured the body’s movements not by drawing but by cutting. Thanks to collage, we are now forewarned: we must look beneath the surface. And beyond.
 
The inner life and the jubilation of bodies. Collage allows her to bring together these two intimate impulses. To counter a social life that is too superficial. To subvert bodies frozen into a single identity or a single gender. Audrey Guttman reconstructs a complex, shifting, and sometimes even dancing world. A world that is fundamentally alive. 

Her collages become intuitive mirrors of this. They reveal what our skin conceals. They set free what our images bury.

 

Audrey Guttman has been creating since childhood: writing, painting, drawing... After studying political science, literature, and art history, collage came to her as a natural choice, as the culmination of her creative process. By drawing on images she uncovers here and there and bringing them together on the page, she shares her poetic and open world, her secret and free visions. Inspired by painting—from the Italian Renaissance to the Belgian Surrealists—as well as by her reading, Audrey Guttman encourages us to rediscover a curious and ambitious perspective, a desire to see the hidden beauty of a world of rediscovered possibilities.

 

Boris Bergmann

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