Sato Gallery welcomes Parisian artist Louise Tilleke.
Louise Tilleke paints, draws and films. Her work has been shown at Galerie Catherine Houard, Galerie RX, Galerie DX, Galerie Guillaume, Hôtel Costes, as well as at Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains. She was nominated for the Prix Marin, whose jury was chaired by David Hockney. Presented by Vladimir Veličković at the Institut de France, she was awarded the Prix Alphonse Cellier. Her works are now held in several public and private collections.

For this exhibition at Sato Gallery, Louise Tilleke presents a body of work developed over the past decade but never before shown. She calls this research “claviérisme” (“keyboardism”). Claviérisme draws on languages built from computer-keyboard signs — typographic emoticons, Kaomoji (Japanese emoticons), Bliss symbols (created by Charles K. Bliss to communicate through pictograms), among others — to compose paintings on canvas. This body of work is conceived as a space for creation rather than communication. Diverted from their original function, these signs become figures or bodily fragments, distant echoes of proto-writing. They belong to our digital age while questioning our constant need to represent, encode and replay the world through symbols. The term claviérisme evokes both the keyboardist — for the musicality and rhythm sought — and the gesture: an exploration of the resources of writing and play, in a continuous tension between constraint and freedom.

Practical information
Sato Gallery — 58 rue Charlot, 75003 Paris (2F)
Exhibition: 14–23 November
Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 11am–7pm (closed Sunday and Monday)
Free entry