TEA TIME (no sugar): Group show
Forthcoming exhibition
Works
Overview
What resists immediate visibility is often where we assign the most value.
Tea Time (No Sugar) begins from the premise that meaning is rarely located in what is most apparent. What we see is shaped as much by what is withheld as by what is placed directly before us. This exhibition explores femininity as a way of experiencing the world; context changes, yet what endures is the choreography between intimacy and performance, the moments that unfold without the watchful eye, the cup of tea drunk alone, or the carefully staged tea time performed as ritual across generations.
Reminiscent of Mrs Dalloway, where tea becomes a transitional space of introspection and the dynamics between people surface through ritualized gestures, it also echoes Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, where in the absurd declaration that “it is always six o’clock here,” tea time never ends.
The exhibition gathers artists who work through controlled exposure. Bodies appear fragmented as well as saturated. Theatrical and mythic presences emerge. In some works, the feminine is subtle, almost imperceptible; in others, it is deliberately staged.
David Nicholson stages intimacy as spectacle, placing the privacy of the unintentional gesture on display. Annie Sprinkle fragments the body into serial gestures, transforming exposure into pattern. Myriam Mechita’s red-saturated drawings dissolve contour into the atmosphere. Katia Bourdarel invokes myth as metamorphosis, where figures exist at the edge of transformation.
In the hyperreal surfaces of Till Rabus and Leopold Rabus, seduction slips into unease. Santiago Martinez Peral’s theatrical figures oscillate between costume and vulnerability; blocks of color establish intention within carefully rendered gestures. Cecile Barma’s quiet interiors speak through absence, through traces of lived moments. Hugo Alonso suspends the image in blur and hesitation. Élodie Antoine’s felt sculptures turn softness into something tangible, transforming the familiar into forms entirely their own.
Tea Time (No Sugar) proposes a ritual without sweetening. It implies restraint, a gesture stripped of embellishment. What persists is sharper, more concentrated. Tea time has long marked a transitional hour, profoundly enmeshed with the feminine, suspended between the hard visibility of day and the shadowed intimacy of night. Within that threshold, this exhibition finds its ground; a space where performance and intimacy coexist.
