Frieze Seoul 2024

Guillaume Dénervaud
Frieze Seoul
September 4 – 7, 2024
Booth A33
Presented with Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zurich & Milan

Bel Ami and Galerie Gregor Staiger are pleased to present five new paintings by Guillaume Dénervaud (b. 1987, Fribourg, CH) at Frieze Seoul. Dénervaud’s works are often composed in dense, though congruous, arrangements of ambiguous motifs that evoke plant matter, machine parts or cellular structures. Anchored by a sequence of gateway-like paintings, this exhibition features visions of systems and environments that collapse distinctions between the organic and the built, the microscopic and the galactic, the future and the past.

Techniques of worldbuilding used in fantasy and science fiction films and literature, including the works of Mark von Schlegell, Renee Gladman and Hayao Miyazaki, are of interest to Dénervaud, whose paintings and drawings often allude to the transfer of energy and the development life forms, or what life might regenerate following catastrophe. To develop these bio-machinic fantasia, Dénervaud uses architectural drafting stencils now rendered obsolete by computer-aided design programs, applying vivid color via pigments made from the exoskeletons of insects, minerals, and plants, amongst other organic materials.

Guillaume Dénervaud (b. 1987, Fribourg, Switzerland) lives and works in Paris. He studied at the École des artsappliqués, Geneva and at HEAD, Geneva. Dénervaud’s solo shows include Antenna Space, Shanghai (forthcoming); Gregor Staiger, Zurich (2024); Atrata, St. Croix Chapel-Angles-sur-l’Anglin (2024); Atrata, Paris (2024); Swiss Institute, New York (2023); Bel Ami, Los Angeles (2023); Centre D’édition Contemporary (CEC), Geneva (2021); Balice Hertling, Paris (2019); Alienze, Lausanne (2019); and Hard Hat, Geneva (2018). Group exhibitions include Toward the Celestial: ICA Miami’s Collection at 10 Years, ICA Miami, Miami (2024); Crumbling the Antiseptic Beauty, Pernod Ricard Foundation, Paris (2024); Don’t Worry, This Will All Be Over Soon, Gregor Staiger, Milan (2023); La main-pleur, Fri Art Kunsthalle, Fribourg (2022); Des corps, des écritures, Musée d’art Moderne de Paris (2022); Aquarium, Maison Populaire, Montreuil (2022); Les formes du transfert, Les Magasins Généraux, Paris (2021); Emblazoned World, Bel Ami, Los Angeles (2021); Le sain ennui, BQ Gallery, Berlin (2021); Your Friends and Neighbors, High Art, Paris (2020); and L’Oranger, LiveIn- YourHead, Geneva (2017). Dénervaud participated in the Swiss Institute residency program, New York (2021). His work is in the collections of the ICA Miami; MAMCO, Geneva; FMAC, Geneva; FCAC, Geneva; and the Musée d’art Moderne de Paris. He is a 2023 recipient of the Swiss Art Awards.