Flesh for Fantasy | Natalie Lavelle

4 - 22 July, 2023

For Natalie Lavelle, painting is a life force. So central to her personhood, her works act as proxies for her—embodying her energy, enthusiasm, and spirit. Her latest body of work, Flesh for Fantasy, contemplates Sontag’s question, ‘how can we experience art in a direct, unmediated manner?’. Compelled to deal sensuously with art—to achieve this unmediated experience—Sontag approached art as an exercise in reconnecting the mind and the body, concluding that an art practice could be ‘a new kind of instrument, an instrument for modifying consciousness, and organising new modes of sensibility.’

Throughout this body of work, Lavelle is inviting us to reconnect with our bodies, our sensors, and use them, to experience the pure joy of painting. Take a moment to abandon the habitual nature to extract meaning from the symbolic, iconic, or historic significations in imagery. Flesh for Fantasy is an invitation to just revel, in the immediate, sensuous, physical reality of what is in-front of us—a painting.

Artist Talk

In Conversation with Natalie Lavelle | 13.07.23

Exhibiting artist Natalie Lavelle joined Alain Guillemain in the space to explore the theme of ‘Erotics and the rupture of reason' in Flesh for Fantasy (4 - 22 July).

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Exhibition Essay

Flesh for Fantasy Exhibition Essay by David M Thomas | 23.06.23

“How do we reflect on art? And how do we reflect on the sensuous in art? Painting for some is an art activity, others a profession, some a hobby, and for a few it is a life—or life force. Natalie Lavelle is one of the latter. For Lavelle, painting is so central to her personhood..”