Booth B13
April 9–12, 2026
Grand Palais, Paris
GOWEN brings together Nick Archer, Tess Dumon, Sophie Ryder, and Joana Vasconcelos in a booth that doesn’t try to impress loudly — but quietly shifts perception.
This is not a thematic show. It’s a controlled distortion.
Scale slips. Colour destabilises. The familiar starts behaving strangely.
A TEAPOT THAT BECOMES ARCHITECTURE
At the centre, Five O’Clock (2024) by Joana Vasconcelos — a monumental wrought-iron teapot designed to be overgrown with jasmine.
Domestic object turned structure. Ritual turned landscape.
It’s elegant, slightly absurd, and historically loaded — referencing Portugal’s role in bringing tea to Europe, and the English aristocratic ritual that followed.
The object is no longer functional. It becomes symbolic space.
COLD LIGHT, UNSTABLE LANDSCAPES
Nick Archer builds environments rather than images.
His paintings — enriched with glass beads, silver powder, and gold leaf — reflect an alpine memory: frozen lakes, mirrored mountains, suspended light.
But something is off.
The landscapes shimmer between beauty and unease. Recognition dissolves into something slightly unreal.
LANDSCAPE AS A STATE OF MIND
Tess Dumon pushes things inward.
Working in gouache, she removes landscape from geography and relocates it into psychological space.
Her surfaces absorb light rather than reflect it. Colour becomes affect.
Influenced by Gaston Bachelard, her work moves between water (depth) and air (elevation), between descent and expansion.
These are not views. They are thresholds.
“Where the screen demands immediate action, the canvas imposes a slow temporality.”
MYTH WITHOUT NARRATIVE
Sophie Ryder returns with her hybrid figures — the Lady Hare and the Minotaur.
Half human, half animal, they exist somewhere between instinct and archetype.
Monumental, but not heroic.
Present, but not descriptive.
They don’t tell a story — they hold a presence.
WHAT HOLDS IT TOGETHER
The link between these four artists is subtle but precise:
displacement.
Scale is altered. Colour is intensified. Function disappears.
The result is a space where the ordinary is slightly off — and that shift is enough to create tension.
VANDERLOVE LETTER NOTE
This booth doesn’t try to dominate the fair.
It works differently.
It slows you down. It pulls you in. And once you’re inside, things don’t behave as expected anymore.
Quietly one of the strongest presentations at Art Paris this year.
ALSO ON VIEW IN GENEVA
What Is Really Matter
Sylvie Lambert
March 5 – May 16
GOWEN
23 Grand-Rue, Geneva
gowen.art
