Camille Henrot. Photo: Maria Fonti
Camille Henrot joins Hauser & Wirth
Announcing representation of the French artist, in collaboration with kamel mennour and König Galerie
Camille Henrot (born 1978, Paris, France) is recognized as one of the most influential voices in contemporary art today. Over the past twenty years, she has developed a critically acclaimed practice, encompassing drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, and film, which is informed by a playful research process.
Inspired by literature, second-hand marketplaces, poetry, cartoons, social media, self help, and the banality of everyday life, Henrot’s work captures the complexity of living as both private individuals and global citizens in an increasingly connected and over-stimulated world.
Henrot’s early beginnings are in cartoon animation and experimental film, which continue to inform her practice. In 2011, Henrot moved to New York City, which led to the production of a new work ‘Is It Possible to Be a Revolutionary and Like Flowers,’ a commission from curator Okwui Enwezor for the Paris Triennale Intense Proximity in 2012.
The following year, Henrot received widespread critical acclaim for her film ‘Grosse Fatigue,’ made during a fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution and awarded the Silver Lion at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013. In this work, Henrot critically questions the impulse to consume and represent the totality of the world through an accumulation of objects and images. The resulting 13-minute opus is a dizzying collage of multiplying computer desktop pop-ups featuring images and video, combined with a soundtrack composed by Joakim Bouaziz, a script written in collaboration with Jacob Bromberg, and voiced by multidisciplinary artist Akwetey Orraca-Tetteh. Almost 10 years on, ‘Grosse Fatigue’ remains one of the most influential examples of film in art from this century.
Grosse Fatigue, 2013 © ADAGP Camille Henrot. Courtesy the artist, Silex Films and kamel mennour (Paris/ London)
Bad Dad & Beyond, 2017 © ADAGP Camille Henrot. Courtesy the artist, kamel mennour (Paris/London) and König Galerie (Berlin/London/Seoul). Photo: Genevieve Hanson
In 2014, Henrot expanded upon the ideas developed in ‘Grosse Fatigue’ with ‘The Pale Fox,’ a haptic environment of hundreds of found objects, images, and sculpture exhibited at the Chisenhale Gallery in London. In this installation, the totalizing obsession points to the individual desires and the consciousness of the one who attempts to complete it.
Following ‘The Pale Fox,’ Henrot’s work turned to the questioning of authority, the distribution of information, and interconnecting experiences within the digital landscape. Important works such as the interactive sculptural series ‘Interphones’ (2015) and ‘Office of Unreplied Emails,’ an installation created for the 2016 Berlin Biennale, skilfully explore the tension between our desire to retreat from or engage with technology. In 2017, Henrot was invited to the Carte Blanche series at the Palais de Tokyo, resulting in the major survey exhibition ‘Days Are Dogs,’ with each room structured around the days of the week.
The Pale Fox, 2014. Exhibition view, Westfalischer Kusntverein, 2015. Commissioned and produced by Chisenhale Gallery in partnership with Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; Bétonsalon – Centre for art and research, Paris and Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster. © ADAGP Camille Henrot. Courtesy of the artist, kamel mennour, Paris/London and König Galerie (Berlin/London/Seoul). Photo: Thorsten Arendt
Wet Job, 2020 © ADAGP Camille Henrot. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Genevieve Hanson
Weaving personal stories as well as political issues into her work, the artist explores the ambivalence of interpersonal relations in the face of global issues. Henrot’s latest major body of work, System of Attachment, looks at our human developmental needs for attachment and the origin of language.
A recent exhibition ‘Mother Tongue’ pointed to the changeable, hopeful, rebellious, melancholic, or resigned position that we face amidst the overwhelming expectations of the present moment. Caught between rational systems and intuitive knowledge, Henrot’s works delve into our increasing disposition toward dependency – on technology, information, or belief systems – to unparalleled effects.
End of Me, 2021 © ADAGP Camille Henrot. Courtesy the artist, kamel mennour (Paris/London) and König Galerie (Berlin/London/Seoul). Commissioned by the Liverpool Biennial 2021. Photo: Rob Battersby
Henrot is the recipient of the 2014 Nam June Paik Award and the 2015 Edvard Munch Award. A corresponding exhibition will open at Oslo’s newly opened Munch Museum in September 2022. Henrot’s work is currently the subject of her first major survey exhibition in Australia, ‘Is Today Tomorrow’ at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, until 23 January 2022. Upcoming solo exhibitions include ‘Wet Job’ at Middelheim Museum in Antwerp, Belgium, in May 2022.
Marc Payot, President, Hauser & Wirth, commented, ‘We are honored and delighted to announce our representation of Camille Henrot, an artist whose work is uncanny, powerful, and often so beautiful in the way it reveals the complexity of our relationship with the systems of knowledge we human beings have created and now grapple with. Camille is a pioneer. She is fearless in her effort to get to the bottom of what makes us all tick in the 21st Century and in her ability to locate connections between technology and our deepest humanity, an imperative that places her alongside such greats as the late Nam June Paik, Pierre Huyghe, and Pipilotti Rist, all of whom have been part of our history at Hauser & Wirth. We look forward to exploring the world with her, and sharing Camille’s findings through her wonderful art with ever-wider and more diverse audiences.’
About the Artist
Born in 1978 in Paris, France. The artist lives and works between Berlin and New York City.
The practice of French artist Camille Henrot moves seamlessly between film, painting, drawing, bronze, sculpture, and installation. Henrot draws upon references from literature, psychoanalysis, social media, cultural anthropology, self-help, and the banality of everyday life in order to question what it means to be both a private individual and a global subject.
A 2013 fellowship at the Smithsonian Institute resulted in her film ‘Grosse Fatigue,’ for which she was awarded the Silver Lion at the 55th Venice Biennale. She elaborated ideas from ‘Grosse Fatigue’ to conceive her acclaimed 2014 installation ‘The Pale Fox’ at Chisenhale Gallery in London. The exhibit, which displayed the breadth of her diverse output, went on to travel to institutions including Kunsthal Charlottenburg, Copenhagen; Bétonsalon – Centre for art and research, Paris; Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, Germany; and Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Japan. In 2017, Henrot was given carte blanche at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, where she presented the major exhibition ‘Days Are Dogs,’ She is the recipient of the 2014 Nam June Paik Award and the 2015 Edvard Munch Award, and has participated in the Lyon, Berlin, Sydney and Liverpool Biennials, among others.
Henrot has had numerous solo exhibitions worldwide, including the New Museum, New York; Schinkel Pavilion, Berlin; New Orleans Museum of Art; Fondazione Memmo, Rome; Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Japan, among others.
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