SABOT

Lucie Fontaine
"Latent II"
2024
digital print, collage
42.5 × 32.5 cm (each, framed)
unique piece

"Latent II" is a second iteration of a work first presented in 2012 at The Green Gallery in Milwaukee, in a duo exhibition with Claire Fontaine. The title takes its cue from David Robbins’s "Talent" (1986), which presents contemporary artists through the conventions of entertainment-industry headshots. Here, this logic is applied to fictional artists, pseudonyms and collective identities, blurring the boundaries between invented persona and artistic practice.

Created for "Alias" at M Leuven, the work brings these figures together in a fictional group portrait, suggesting an art world populated by artists whose identities and authorship remain deliberately elusive.

from left to right:

1. Darko Maver (Eva and Franco Mattes)
2. Deborah Bowmann (Victor Delestre and Amaury Daurel)
3. Reena Spaulings (John Kelsey, Emily Sundblad, and Jutta Koether)
4. Charles Rosenthal (Ilya and Emilia Kabakov)
5. Bruce High Quality (G.T. Pellizzi and Rhys Gaetano)
6. Lucie Fontaine
7. Henry Codax (Olivier Mosset and Jacob Kassay)
8. Bernadette Corporation (Bernadette Van-Huy, John Kelsey, and Antek Walczak)
9. Alfred Johansen (Elmgreen & Dragset)
10. Oksana Pasaiko (Mark Manders, Dieter Roelstraete, Massimiliano Gioni, and Marta Kuzma)
11. John Dogg (Richard Prince and Colin de Land)
12. Claire Fontaine (Fulvia Carnevale and James Thornhill)

[part of "The Works Are Fine. The Exhibition Is the Problem." exhibition, to be completed on October 29, 2026]

Natalia Lazurca
"Poppy flowers"
2022
oil on canvas
40 x 30 cm

Stefano Calligaro
"Untitled / Backwave"
2012
first and only impression produced by an inkjet printer performing a backwave
60 x 42 x 28 cm

[part of "The Works Are Fine. The Exhibition Is the Problem" exhibition, to be completed on October 29, 2026]

The Works Are Fine. The Exhibition Is the Problem.

September 28 - October 29, 2026

Opening: Finissage - October 29, 2026

Lately, I find myself weary of exhibitions built around the familiar logic of putting things in their “right” place: carefully selected, carefully lit, carefully balanced, each work given the appropriate amount of space and attention so that it can be properly appreciated. Group exhibitions in particular seem increasingly trapped in this kind of competence. Everything works. Everything is where it should be. And somehow, nothing much is at stake.
We have become so accustomed to the choreography of exhibitions — to the discreet calculations behind what goes where, what meets what, what is given space and what is allowed to speak — that perhaps the greatest risk is no longer a bad installation. Perhaps it is that we have become too good at recognising a good one. [excerpt from the exhibition text]
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Artists: Răzvan Botiș, George Bularca Negru, Stefano Calligaro, Aline Cautis, Radu Comșa, Camilia Filipov, Joe Fletcher Orr, Lucie Fontaine, Nicolás Lamas, Natalia Lazurca, Daniel Moldoveanu, Pepo Salazar Lacruz, Alice Tomaselli, Alexandra Zuckerman.

Radu Comșa ART-O-RAMA

Painting Protocol (RGB / % / α / CMY / CUT /SEW)
2026
artist’s drawing (alpha channel) UV-printed on removable vinyl wallpaper; UV print on cotton
fabric; beach umbrella; artist’s drawing CNC-cut in MDF (Erasure / α = 0); polyurethane primer
site-specific installation, variable dimensions

Radu Comșa’s installation engaged directly with Lucian Hrisav’s paintings, approaching them not as images but as sources of data from which colour codes were extracted and the relative proportion of each hue was measured. These values generated new digital compositions in which colour and transparency were determined through calculation rather than direct application of pigment.

The process extended into physical space. The UV-printed canvases have been placed against an enlarged alpha-channel grid, while sections cut from them exposed the grid behind, turning absence into part of the image. The removed fragments were then sewn together into a beach umbrella, transferring material from painting into a functional, three-dimensional object.

A further layer, "Erasure / α = 0", translated the digital gesture of erasure into a physical object. The artist’s drawing of an erasure was CNC-cut in MDF, coated in polyurethane primer and installed directly over the alpha-channel grid. A gesture that would normally remove image information has thus been given material form and superimposed onto the very field that digitally represented its absence.

Moving from painting to data, digital image, absence, and object, Comșa’s installation has become an inquiry into how painting could continue to exist once the gestures conventionally associated with it have been removed.

[This work was presented at Art-O-Rama 2026 as part of Sabot x H’Art Gallery joint booth, in dialogue with Lucian Hrisav’s paintings.]

We are deeply grateful to ICR Paris, Institutul Cultural Român/ RCI, and UniCredit Bank Romania for their generous and invaluable support of this presentation.

Photo credit: Margot Montigny.

PAROLE DI CONTRABBANDO 1
2026
edition of 25

The concept, or call it an idea, is simple, very simple. It isn't about offering people a gadget or something to buy, even though, of course, these sheets can be bought and collected; but that's not the point. The point is to smuggle words in and out, without fanfare (after all, this isn't an exhibition, not even an event). The point is to smuggle (sorry if I use this word so much, but I find it key) a language.

And not just any language: my language, one that not everyone understands, yet one they could try to understand if they wanted to (for me, the madness, or lunacy, of this gesture lies in the fact that it's Sabot, a Romanian entity, doing this). As I said, it's about smuggling words (poetry?) for the pleasure of having them read. It's about slipping them across the table, right out in the open, under everyone's noses, without expecting any particular reaction from those who see them. (I guess nobody really cares. Here lies the madness of making art and poetry. But maybe someone does care, and for them these words will be there, over there, or right here, wherever we choose to smuggle them).

Do I expect to sell them? No. Do I expect compliments? No. Do I feel the need and the pleasure to write them and set them loose? Yes.

Nicolás Lamas — "Ultra fines corporis"

June 11 - August 3, 2026
Opening: Thursday, June 11, 7pm

To exist is to be exposed. Exposed to time, to pressure, to language, to technology, to the gaze, and to the influence of other material agents. The skin does not separate interior from exterior in any absolute sense. Rather than a boundary, it is a zone of exchange where such distinctions begin to dissolve. Nothing touches a body without altering it. Every proximity produces an inscription, however subtle. Matter retains the memory of encounters through tension, wear, and traces that surface in different degrees of transformation. [excerpt from the exhibition text]

ALICE TOMASELLI
"Bitten canvas" (series)
2013—
mixed media on canvas, stretcher bitten by the artist
46 X 38.5 cm