Cécile Lempert

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Leo Gallery is pleased to present Cécile Lempert’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong on 28 November 2024, following her successful debut exhibition, “Der Albtraum der Bienenkönigin”, at our Shanghai space in May this year. The show will showcase the artist’s latest series of paintings.

Lempert’s work is deeply intertwined with her immediate surroundings, focusing on specific psychological states and nuanced interpersonal relationships. Drawing inspiration from her family photo archives, she weaves together different segments of pictorial histories. Rather than merely highlighting the pleasant aspects, Lempert is more intrigued by contradictions and ambiguities, aiming to capture the emotional integrity of the scenes. “By combining different visual narratives and isolating individual pictorial elements, new narratives unfold that shift or even dissolve temporal and geographical references.” Yet, these works retain a nostalgic ambiance.

In the exhibition, Lempert presents family portraits, establishing relationships of mutual observation and whispered secrets between the paintings through a penetrating gaze that traverses the canvas. “She discovers the fragility and reverence of life through the shifting gazes of the characters or animals in her paintings. The way she composes her work is reminiscent of mechanical imagery (photography or film), and the numerous movements across different works trigger a dialogue with each other.” The childlike forms of expression in certain works harmonize with the exquisite depiction of specific psychological states from an adult’s perspective. Juxtaposing ambiguous landscapes alongside the portraits, or what seems like distant white horses “intruding” into the family narrative, further diminishes the readability of the characters’ gazes captured by the artist’s brush, disrupting the boundary between reality and imagination. “Despite their intensity, spatial voids can be found, offering space for personal projections into the here and now.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Cécile Lempert (b 1994, Dortmund, Germany). From 2014 to 2021, Lempert studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under the guidance of Professors Peter Piller and Stefan Kürten. In 2019, she participated in the Aq Tushetil Artist Resident Project in Omalo, Georgia, and was based at the Royal Academy of Arts that same year. In 2021, Lempert, Domingo Chaves, Sibylle Czichon, and others jointly founded the AURA Art Space.

Lempert attaches great importance capturing psychological states and interpersonal relationships in her work and often extending her discussion to the themes of "belonging" through personal and family elements. Since graduating from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2021, Lempert has held solo exhibitions in several galleries at home and abroad, including Efremidis in Berlin, Elsa Meunier in Paris, IAH in Seoul. In 2023, she participated in the Cologne Art Fair and the June Art Fair Basel with Efremidis Galerie.