Semiose

[Offsite 🐱]⁠
Cat People. Des Artistes et des Chats⁠ [Of Artists and Cats]⁠
group show with Oli Epp & Laurent Le Deunff, curated by Marc Bembekoff⁠
La Galerie, Noisy Le Sec (FR)⁠
Until December 31, 2025⁠

More info: urls.fr/A885xQ
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Cat People takes an ironic look at the complex relationship between humans and cats, drawing on themes from Jacques Derrida’s The Animal That Therefore I Am. Referencing Jacques Tourneur’s 1942 film, the exhibition presents works that explore cats as reassuring companions but also as unsettling mirrors of societal anxieties. Through diverse approaches—from anthropomorphism to kitsch—it reflects on what the feline figure reveals about us.⁠
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Oli Epp⁠
Ninth Life, 2022⁠
Polyester resin painted⁠
273 × 460 × 180 cm / 107 1/2 × 181 1/8 × 70 7/8 in. ⁠
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Artists list: Adel Abdessemed, M’barka Amor, Amber Andrews, Sophia Balagamwala, Sarah Nefissa Belhadjali, Pierre Bellot, Marcel Broodthaers, Nina Childress, Ann Craven, Gerrit Frohne-Brinkmann, Claire Guetta, Charles Hascoët, Andy Holden, Armand Jalut, Louise Luc Kheloui, Rayane Mcirdi, Damir Očko, Alain Séchas, Mayura Torii, Yves Trémorin & Sarah Tritz⁠
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[New Publication 📘]⁠
Xie Lei⁠
with essays by Claire Staebler & Florian Gaîté, and a conversation between Xie Lei & Martin Bethenod⁠.⁠
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120-page book, French / English⁠
ISBN 9782377390809⁠
29⁠€⁠
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Available at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris, at Semiose gallery and online: urls.fr/tuXdJ9
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This first monography dedicated to the artist Xie Lei provides an overview that seeks to shed light on the mystery surrounding his painting. Through its essays and interviews, an extensive portfolio, reference works and a plethora of bibliographic and iconographic content, it enables us to explore the origins of Xie Lei’s work, its evolution, its prominent features and its ambiguity. This publication yields inferences–perhaps–and more surely, allows us to take measure of the troubled situations into which the artist’s painting projects us. Discreetly related to literary and cinematic memories, or plucked from the deep crucible of his feelings, these images explore desires and obsessions, as secret as they are universal. ⁠
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Featured: Claire Staebler, FlorianGaite & MartinBethenod⁠
Editing: Laetitia Chauvin⁠�
Graphic design: Jean-Philippe Bretin⁠
Studio views shot by Esmire & Erwan
Translation: Chris Atkinson

[Offsite] ⁠
Marcel Duchamp Prize ✨️⁠
Exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris⁠
September 26, 2025 - February 22, 2026⁠

More info: urls.fr/Mw06US
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This 25th edition of the Marcel Duchamp Prize brings together Bianca Bondi, Xie Lei, Eva Nielsen, and Lionel Sabatté, under the curatorship of Julia Garimorth and Jean-Pierre Criqui. Presented for the first time at the Musée d’Art Moderne, the exhibition will run from September 26, 2025, to February 22, 2026, ahead of the announcement of the winner on October 23 during Art Basel Paris.⁠ For this exhibition, Xie Lei unveils a body of large-scale works conceived as an immersive environment, in which the notion of the “Fall” emerges as the central theme.⁠
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Finalists with Xie Lei: BiancaBondi, EvaNielsen & LionelSabatte⁠
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Installation view © Aurélien Mole.

Françoise Pétrovitch⁠
Sur un os⁠, curated by Rahmouna Boutayeb & Numa Hambursin⁠
MO.CO Montpelier Contemporain (FR)⁠
Until November 2, 2025⁠

More info: urls.fr/WjubOp
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The first floor of Françoise Pétrovitch's exhibition at MO.CO. hosts a sizeable series of wash drawings that conjure up strange landscapes occasionally reminiscent of Romantic or Symbolist aesthetics, and a gallery of tormented characters in the throes of aimless wandering. It also features largescale paintings, one of which, of monumental proportions, was⁠
produced for the exhibition. It is a testament to the luminous dimension which imbues Françoise Pétrovitch’s work, including when her intent is to capture the notion of the in-between.⁠
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Françoise Pétrovitch⁠
Escape, 2024⁠
Ink wash on paper⁠
120 × 160 cm / 47 1/4 × 63 in. ⁠
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📸 Aurélien Mole

Philemona Williamson⁠
Lopsided⁠
Until October 11, 2025⁠
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“Standing up to bullying, standing firm in the face of injustice, ‘making good trouble’ are all a given when confronted with the inhumanity that seems on the rise.” — Philemona Williamson⁠
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Philemona Williamson⁠
Shall Not Be Moved, 2025⁠
Oil on canvas⁠
50,8 × 40,6 × 2,5 cm / 20 × 16 × 1 in. ⁠
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📸 Aurélien Mole

Françoise Pétrovitch⁠
Sur un os⁠, curated by Rahmouna Boutayeb & Numa Hambursin⁠
MO.CO Montpelier Contemporain (FR)⁠
Until November 2, 2025⁠

More info: urls.fr/4BMBMH
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The first floor of Françoise Pétrovitch's exhibition at MO.CO. hosts a sizeable series of wash drawings that conjure up strange landscapes occasionally reminiscent of Romantic or Symbolist aesthetics, and a gallery of tormented characters in the throes of aimless wandering. It also features largescale paintings, one of which, of monumental proportions, was⁠
produced for the exhibition. It is a testament to the luminous dimension which imbues Françoise Pétrovitch’s work, including when her intent is to capture the notion of the in-between.⁠
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Françoise Pétrovitch⁠
Escape, 2024⁠
Ink wash on paper⁠
120 × 160 cm / 47 1/4 × 63 in. ⁠
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📸 Aurélien Mole

Laurent Proux⁠
The Nature Poem⁠
Until October 11, 2025⁠
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Discover the exhibition online: urls.fr/ohbBSV
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“What scene is this? These characters are dreaming up a world that is far less innocent than the nudes in full light by the bent tree, or those that we saw in the retrospective L’Arbre et la Machine at the Musée de l’Abbaye in Saint-Claude (8 February – 28 September 2025). We can no longer believe in their complete casualness. Time no longer stands still. The geometry has become complex, orchestrating a great battle à la Uc***lo where everywhere undergrowth branches clash and crack. As for the bodies, they use up the as yet empty space. Something has just happened: something is slipping, the intertwined group. Imminence is becoming paint. And Laurent Proux puts us, the viewers, in front of this undecidable world fragment, fascinating in its details of multiple crevices, creating for us, near the lovers, a lit-up path. It is up to us to see the escape. [...]” — Jérôme Duwa⁠
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📸 Rebecca Fanuele⁠, Aurélien Mole

[Opening ✨️]⁠
Congratulations again to Xie Lei on being shortlisted for the 2025 Marcel Duchamp Prize and for taking part in the finalists’ exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, opening tonight.⁠ For this exhibition, Xie Lei unveils a body of large-scale works conceived as an immersive environment, in which the notion of the “Fall” emerges as the central theme.⁠
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This 25th edition of the Marcel Duchamp Prize brings together Bianca Bondi, Xie Lei, Eva Nielsen, and Lionel Sabatté, under the curatorship of Julia Garimorth and Jean-Pierre Criqui. Presented for the first time at the Musée d’Art Moderne, the exhibition will run from September 26, 2025, to February 22, 2026, ahead of the announcement of the winner on October 23 during Art Basel Paris.⁠
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Xie Lei⁠
Fall VIII, 2025⁠
Oil on canvas⁠
270 × 95 cm / 106 5/16 × 37 3/8 in.⁠
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Finalists with Xie Lei: BiancaBondi, EvaNielsen & LionelSabatte⁠
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Installation view © Aurélien Mole.

[Offsite 💦]⁠
Biennale d'Issy: L’Eau Intranquille ⁠
with Amélie Bertrand, curated by Sophie Deschamps Causse & Anne Malherbe⁠
Musée français de la carte à jouer, Issy (FR)⁠
September 17 - November 9, 2025⁠

More info: urls.fr/o0NGV3
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The Issy Biennale, founded in 1995, celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2025 as a major event in contemporary art, showcasing around sixty emerging and established artists from France and abroad. Each edition is centered on a theme, and this year’s—The Restless Water—invites poetic and political reflections on water as a vital, unstable, and symbolic force.⁠
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Amélie Bertrand⁠
Arcane Tapestry, 2024⁠
Acrylic on paper mounted on aluminium⁠
150 × 120 cm / 59 1/16 × 47 1/4 in.

[Last Days]⁠
Laurent Proux⁠
L'Arbre et la Machine⁠
📍 Musée de l'Abbaye, Saint-Claude (FR)⁠
🗓️ Until September 28, 2025⁠

More info: urls.fr/xNU_Gp
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The Musée de l’Abbaye in Saint-Claude is hosting a major solo exhibition of Laurent Proux, following his residency in the Jura region. Known for his international residencies and exhibitions in Paris, Berlin, New York, and beyond, Proux presents around forty works, half of them new, inspired by local industries and the region’s social heritage. His paintings often focus on the human body at work, highlighting the rarely represented world of labor in contemporary art. Alongside these depictions of workers, the exhibition also features imaginative scenes of bodies in natural landscapes—figures that merge, transform, or dissolve into organic forms. ⁠
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📸 Pierre Guénat

[Last Days ✨️]⁠
Stefan Rinck⁠
Parade⁠
Domaine de Chamarande (FR)⁠
Public opening May 4th, 2025⁠, from 3pm⁠

More info: urls.fr/qXSnOe
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⁠Three monumental sculptures, created in the Lecce quarry in Italy, are on display in the park, in the form of an enigmatic parade through the heart of nature, and in the orangerie, a series of new works sculpted in stone as well as a number of drawings, unveiled for the very first time. 🌳⁠
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📸 Aurélien Mole

Laurent Proux⁠
The Nature Poem⁠
Until October 11, 2025⁠
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Discover the exhibition online: urls.fr/GyhJPt
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“Often, with Laurent Proux’s painted bodies, we are not quite sure who owns which limb; there is an overall delightful confusion or a sort of organic pooling. The bodies made available come together and hybridise. Plugging in on each other, connecting their emotions via a caress or an embrace, they escape conventional desire-induced projections. Something from the Mannerist legacy runs through these pictures, namely in these particularly extravagant melees of bodies reminiscent, for example, of Bronzino’s in An Allegory with Venus and Cupid (c. 1545, National Gallery, London). [...]” — Jérôme Duwa⁠
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Laurent Proux⁠
Kaleidoscope, 2025⁠
Oil on canvas⁠
184 × 140 cm / 72 7/16 × 55 1/8 in. ⁠
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📸 Rebecca Fanuele⁠, Aurélien Mole