Expensive, the title of a previously unseen painting by Sylvie Fanchon, sets the tone for her first posthumous exhibition at Galerie Maubert, Paris. The lettering, stenciled across the entire bottom of the paper sheet, is left as a reserve in the surface. The word is marked by orange acrylic traces from the monochrome background. One can imagine the artist’s pleasure in letting the paint spill into the word, smudging it as the stencil is removed. It reveals her rejection of a kind of perfection associated with smooth, polished execution and sharp outlines.

Expensive reflects Sylvie Fanchon’s sharp sense of humor about the subjectivity and mutability of artistic value, and about the figure of the artist—treated with (self-)mockery in an effort to avoid any form of sacralization. Marcel Broodthaers was one of her favorite artistic references. She often quoted his definition of art as “an apolitical, useless, and slightly immoral activity”—a provocatively contrarian stance in our time, which tends to conflate art, politics, and morality.

The exhibition brings together works from different periods of Sylvie Fanchon’s career, from the 1990s to the 2020s, selected from several painting series, following the guiding thread of the visual organization of “the painting as a surface for reflection.” From the early Architectures to the more recent The Purpose of Art, all remain faithful to the principles at the core of Fanchon’s practice: the pursuit of flatness, the use of two colors, and the simplification of forms. “I don’t work toward visual mimicry but toward visual organization using borrowed, simplified real-world objects reintroduced into the surface of the painting. My goal: to strip forms down.” Her drawing practice, which began very late in 2022, perfectly extends this process of simplifying forms, using the lighter, more agile tools of pencil and paper.

This exhibition continues to place Sylvie Fanchon’s work within a lineage of conceptual painting, rather than abstraction—though her work was at times classified as abstract due to the formal rigor of her compositions. In Expensive, a continuous dialogue unfolds with Marcel Broodthaers, particularly through their shared interest in the artist’s signature and initials. This is highlighted by the inclusion of Broodthaers’s piece ABC – ABC Image (1974). Also featured is the striking vocal performance Stripsody (1966) by soprano Cathy Berberian, whose illustrated score reflects a shared affection for “toons”—cartoon characters used to approach representation with both distance and wit. The video of this iconic performance provides the soundtrack for the exhibition.

Kathy Alliou

Curator, director of the Fine Arts Department of the Beaux-arts de Paris