with
lee bae , marine bikard, mathieu bonardet, jennifer caubet, claire chesnier , chang kai-chun, caroline corbasson, farid kati, hanna råst, lee ufan and li xin
How can a trace contain time, and what remains of a gesture once the movement itself has vanished?
Bringing together artists from different generations and backgrounds as part of the celebration of the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between France and Korea, Gesture(s), Trace(s) and Breath(s) explores the ways in which gesture inscribes time into matter.
Through the repetition of gestures, the inscription of rhythms, the recording of presence, or the gradual emergence of form, a wide range of techniques—drawing, painting, ink, glass, metal, and paper—become sites of attention to breath, duration, and what endures after the action has passed.
With his Dialogue series, Lee Ufan opens a space of restraint in which gesture, reduced to its essentials, creates a tension between watercolor and the blankness of paper. Here, the trace appears as a breath: singular, suspended, and conscious of its own disappearance. In his work, emptiness is never absence but rather a space of relation, extending the Mono-ha movement’s reflection on the dialogue between matter, time, and perception.
This attention to silence and impermanence finds an echo in the paintings and drawings of Caroline Corbasson, including a series produced during her residency at Lee Ufan Arles in 2025. Her works shift our gaze toward cosmic scales, where the human gesture seems to resonate with forces and phenomena far beyond itself.
This tension between physical presence and invisible forces continues in Jennifer Caubet’s sculpture. Rising vertically between floor and ceiling, her structure—combining blown glass and metal and inspired by high-voltage power-line insulators—acts as a punctuation mark within the exhibition space. The work renders perceptible flows that usually escape our senses, transforming tension into a tangible experience.
Other artists, by contrast, embrace instability and the circulation of matter. In the works of Li Xin and the washes of Claire Chesnier, ink, water, and oil form abstract landscapes in which shapes seem to emerge even as they dissolve. Gesture enters into dialogue with accident, chance, and surrender.
Responding to this fluidity is a practice of gesture grounded in repetition and endurance. In Chang Kai-Chun’s work, the arm extended to the far edge of the canvas, a vertical movement is repeated tirelessly until a meditative and vibrant composition comes into being. Similarly, Mathieu Bonardet’s drawings engage the body in an accumulation of marks in which exhaustion becomes a measure of time. The line is no longer merely a form but a record of physical resistance between graphite and paper.
The memory of gesture acquires a new density in the works of Lee Bae, who transforms charcoal powder into a deep and vibrant presence. In his practice, matter retains the memory of fire, combustion, and transformation—a slow temporality embedded within the very surface of the work.
Finally, the exhibition makes room for play, instability, and natural forces. Farid Kati embraces the movements of air through a machine that translates variations in the wind onto paper, while Marine Bikard and Hanna Råst investigate the fragile persistence of images and impressions through tracing paper and printed puzzles. Their works seem to oscillate between appearance and disappearance, as though every trace remained perpetually on the verge of erasure.
Between restraint and intensity, silence and energy, the works gathered here form a sensitive landscape in which gesture becomes a way of inhabiting time, recording its passage, and experiencing its fragility.
Curators
Antoine Le Clézio & Maxime Allain