À PEINE UN LIEU
The Bacqueville Gallery is pleased to present a new solo exhibition by Gautier Deblonde.
Gautier Deblonde continues his exploration of the intimacy of creation with a new series dedicated to artists' studios, a subject he approaches with poetry, through silences and suspended moments. Since 2004, artists from around the world have entrusted him with capturing their studios in their absence. Each photograph captures what escapes the hurried glance: here, a magazine page with a portrait of Simone de Beauvoir in Rose Wylie's studio; there, the successive layers of an overflowing painting at Callum Innes's studio; or these accumulations of objects, both sacred and profane, at Michel Nedjar's studio. Gautier Deblonde does not merely document, he reveals, inscribing in the photographic material the essence of the places, their textures, their breath, their secret power.
For this exhibition, the artist unveils other facets of his work by including a series of videos taken in Celia Paul's studio, a portrait of the painter Jules de Balincourt, a contact sheet, and a series of still lifes. These sensitive fragments tell the story of the artists through their surroundings.
Exhibition from 18 September to 25 October 2025.
Opening on Thursday 18 September, from 6.30pm to 9pm.
Image above: Sans titre, Londres (detail), 2025
Image below: Atelier Michel Nedjar, Paris, 2020
There are places that do not reveal themselves, that do not assert themselves. Blurred spaces, traversed rather than inhabited, where artistic gestures begin, are interrupted, or simply pass by. It is in these margins that this exhibition finds its place.
‘À peine un lieu’ brings together works that do not illustrate the artist, but suggest him through his surroundings: displaced objects, fragments of material, studio remnants, silent spaces. Here, intimacy is never direct; it can be read through subtle presences, secondary signs, residual elements.
This is not a cartography of studios, nor a visual biography. It is a sensitive journey where each piece is a trace of existence, an echo of a thought at work, an imprint left in the hollow.
The artists gathered here reveal, voluntarily or not, areas of intimacy, but without pathos or staging. They show what escapes the direct gaze: interrupted gestures, objects without status, interstitial places.
The exhibition is composed of fragments, empty spaces and materials waiting to be used. Works that do not claim to say everything but leave enough silence for the gaze to settle on them. Absence then becomes language.
‘À peine un lieu’ is also an invitation to slow down, to recognise in the formless and unfinished a form of expression as powerful as the work itself. It is a lateral approach to viewing, where what seemed incidental becomes central, and where silence becomes form.
Gautier Deblonde, july 2025