Perrine Boudy: Juste avant les hors-d’oeuvres at Sorry We're Closed, Brussels

Perrine Boudy: Juste avant les hors-d’oeuvres is on view at Sorry We’re Closed, Brussels

June 5 – July 5, 2025

Perrine Boudy is often asked:

— Do you ride horses? The answer is no.

What she does ride, however, are doves, earthen doves, which she erects into vases, amphorae or scrolled craters, in the manner of those made in the Greek or Etruscan periods. From the great pots and vases dedicated to ancient battle stories.

But these equids, so present in the artist’s sculptural work, are not these great victorious figures. They replace the human figure and become a pretext for analyzing their behavior, as in a Marivaudian laboratory.

— Do you ride horses? Not really, no.

Perrine Boudy paints them. Perhaps she dreams of being a jockey, or an Amazon? Maybe even both. These haggard-looking horses, with eyes more vacant than bright, a little silly, as if out of a comic book, are rather grotesque. They tell us that they are simpler and less self confident, no longer wanting to embody power or war, racing or competition.

They contort themselves into rounds. Their azure-colored engobes bear witness to an affection for a certain era, that of modernity, of the 20th century when artists crossed their practices and disciplines. From painting to ceramics, from set design to drawing, from film sets to jewelry.

Perrine paints, draws and sculpts, taking her inspiration from this period and in particular from Christian Jacques Bérard, known as “Bébé”, set and costume designer for theater and film, fashion designer, designer and collaborator of Cocteau, Jean Genêt and Christian Dior. Perrine Boudy’s theatrical stage designs are at the service of the reading of her ceramics, between which playlets are created as possible dialogues between the painted characters and the forms they illustrate.

— Do you ride horses? No, no, not yet.

It’s the spectators who act as riders. Circling these voluntarily pompous, grotesque, burlesque and comic backdrops, these horses – chevalettes, ponies or thoroughbreds, trained or wild – speak to us of another narrative, that of a pastelized contemporaneity that, thanks to otherness and difference, attempts to soften a world that is still far too absurd.

Text by Émilie Pischedda

Born on January 24, 1995, Perrine Boudy lives and works between Marseille and Gardanne. After a law degree from Paris XI, she graduated from Villa Arson in 2023. Her work, centered on drawing, extends to ceramics and murals. Inspired by the Greco-Roman period, she is interested in details, whether taken from ancient works or cartoons, and reintegrates them into her practice. Perrine Boudy seeks to create a balance between decorative and fine arts, with the aim of constructing her own mythology in a total space.

Contact
info@sorrywereclosed.com

Sorry We’re Closed
Rue des Minimes, 39
1000 Brussels
Belgium

Photos courtesy of the gallery

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