We are very pleased to present the third solo exhibition by Anne-Lise Coste in our gallery. For this show Anne-Lise Coste has created a new group of paintings using water-based spray paints. Her decision was to not write words right after having dealt with them intensively in another series.

The 14 paintings, entitled Love, in the exhibition are loose unprimed canvases that she worked on in different ways. The element that connects the paintings is spray paint. Anne-Lise Coste folded some of the canvases before she started spraying. With this simple hand movement and the targeted application of the spray, she gives the works a sculptural quality. This sparing use of artistic means, which is also reflected in the hanging of the paintings with only a stapler, corresponds to Anne-Lise Coste's attitude in this group of works. On the one hand, she emphasizes the lightness of the gesture, on the other hand, she captures her movements through the sweeping strokes of the spray lines. A new element in her work is the use of scissors to deconstruct and reconstruct the canvases. Some works Anne-Lise Coste relates to tailoring, couture, and she notes that the same heavy fabric is sometimes used for the first fashion designs.

Anne-Lise Coste is a master of the spray technique. These paintings have an immediacy due to the process, which she further enhances by hanging them in a specific way. Some pictures radiate a colorful festivity, others astonish with a crude, punk-like directness. Anne-Lise Coste has a gift for creating valid artistic works through minimal mark-making on simple material. At the same time, this body of works can be seen as a commentary on the possibilities of painting in general, as currently shown in the exhibition Stop Painting curated by Peter Fischli at the Fondazione Prada in Venice.

Anne-Lise Coste's art has a strong recognizability despite the different vocabulary of the individual groups of works. Her art is genuine, direct, political and without compromise.

Anne-Lise Coste (born 1973 in Marignane near Marseille, France) studied in Marseille and in Zurich, after which she was based in New York. She now lives in Sète (South of France). Her drawings and texts have the immediacy of graffiti, and allow her to express subjective moods mixed with political criticism and literary sentences. With a dada-influenced language and intensely lyrical images, her work exudes irony, rebellion and emotion. Her work is in the collections of many public and corporate collection, MACBA, Barcelona; FRAC des Pays de la Loire; Swiss National Bank; Deutsche Bank and in many private collections in Europe and the USA. She had numerous solo exhibitions recently amongst others at the Dortmunder Kunstverein, the CRAC in Sète and the Salomon Fondation in Annecy. In 2022 she will have a large exhibition at the Kunsthaus Baselland.

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Anne-Lise Coste in conversation with Oriane Durand, 4 December 2021