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is pleased to present Vaisseaux, an exhibition of new paintings by Gregory Olympio. In this latest body of work, Olympio presents the reclining figure as a central motif for the works; a subtle allusion to art histories of the painted recumbent body in renderings of devotion, intimacy and looking, from the Pietà to the odalisque and more contemporary meditations on rest and vulnerability. Aware of this lineage, Olympio however draws on it only lightly, presenting his reposing figures in a quieter register, as if in a state of suspension, where meaning is held in reserve.
His bodies lie open, horizontal and unguarded, embedded within broad chromatic fields that function less as grounds or settings than as charged atmospheres. The bodies do not perform action, nor do they withdraw into sleep. They seem to hover, to wait. Theirs is an asking stillness, situated somewhere between presence and disappearance; temporary vessels of memory and potential.
The figures do not assert identity so much as receive it. Reduced to essential gestures, they resist the emotional closure of portraiture and the certainty of narrative, instead retaining their corporeal openness, a porous, liminal surface through which projection and self-determination circulate and combine. Meaning does not reside securely within the paintings and their figures; it gathers around them, activated through gaze, sensation and attention.
Colour sustains and intensifies this openness. Pigment does not describe the bodies so much as presses against them, stains them, and receives them. Colour operates as a material atmosphere, shaping how the figures are felt rather than how they are named: Olympio’s bodies do not wear colour but inhabit it.
His bodies lie open, horizontal and unguarded, embedded within broad chromatic fields that function less as grounds or settings than as charged atmospheres. The bodies do not perform action, nor do they withdraw into sleep. They seem to hover, to wait. Theirs is an asking stillness, situated somewhere between presence and disappearance; temporary vessels of memory and potential.
The figures do not assert identity so much as receive it. Reduced to essential gestures, they resist the emotional closure of portraiture and the certainty of narrative, instead retaining their corporeal openness, a porous, liminal surface through which projection and self-determination circulate and combine. Meaning does not reside securely within the paintings and their figures; it gathers around them, activated through gaze, sensation and attention.
Colour sustains and intensifies this openness. Pigment does not describe the bodies so much as presses against them, stains them, and receives them. Colour operates as a material atmosphere, shaping how the figures are felt rather than how they are named: Olympio’s bodies do not wear colour but inhabit it.
