Iseult Perrault
Freaktional Lands
May 31 – July 20, 2024
Ballon Rouge is pleased to present Iseult Perrault’s “Freaktional Lands” from May 31 - July 20, 2024.
Perrault’s practice centers on the landscape. She creates these fantastical views from an amalgamation of patterns, influences, and recognizable and imagined plant and flower life. Ironically, her process begins on the computer, a screen, the very place from which many of us—if we are honest—are able see the breadth of our vast planet. Even when we see a beautiful vista in reality, our collective impulse is to take a photo with our phone. The artificiality and the surrealism of Perrault’s lands thrive because of their apt reflection of our own detachment with nature and the very real peril it is in. These landscapes are entirely fictional, freaky, illogical.
Every single work, while sometimes holding grains of truth, does not exist in reality. And, every work depicts a new place, a new story. Each painting indicates a singular ecosystem which exists away and untouched by humanity and in turn commodification. Perrault takes us all over her imagined world; from what looks like a burnt out forest, to a cartoon-clouded, too-perfect obscured view, to a many-mooned night sky. They are invented and yet they feel real and convincing. There is an alchemy to these works. They warn and they somehow comfort. Not unlike the way we are hypnotized by flames.
Perrault plays with this disconnect. Framing has often taken an important role in her practice; she sometimes places found objects within or around her frames, which creates a ruse on our perception of reality. In “Les Paralunes” (2024), for example, Perrault places an umbrella within the frame of the work. In one small gesture, Perrault nods to the Surrealist greats that have influenced her, and to a singular object that is indicative of the human avoidance of nature. On another frame a fake ant is placed; a metaphor for labor, for the work we all need to do together to help our environment, and each other. This exhibition is an ode to trees, to flowers, and grass, to animals, and the moon. It’s also rife with ironies, jests, metaphors, and both real and imagined stories.
Iseult Perrault is a Paris-based visual artist (b. 1993) of French origin who graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Painting (2021). Perrault’s creative practice involves creating 2D and 3D installations that combine virtual and real, exploring the ideas of authenticity, temporality, and limits. As an artist, she is interested in the creative exploration of landscape - a theme that can be universally related to by all. We do not all share the same landscapes, but we all have landscapes within us and an immaterial representation of them. These representations trigger a desire to question the world around us and the different ways of positioning our gaze on our environments.
Perrault’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at Art Basel (2017), Cultural Center, and the FILE festival in Sao Paulo (2018), Mamco, Geneva (2019), Bankley Gallery, Manchester (2019), the Gilchrist Fisher Award at Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery, London (2020), and Natasha Arselan Projects, London (2023). Solo shows include Laurence and Friends Gallery, Geneva ( 2022 ) and Virginie Louvet Gallery, Paris (2023).
Most recently, she won the Don Papa Foundation's Contemporary Art Prize, which resulted in a residency in the Philippines and an exhibition of her work at the Philippine Art Fair in February 2024.