Sylvie Fajfrowska at Galerie Eric Mircher: Between Abstraction and Figuration

Sylvie Fajfrowska's exhibition at Galerie Eric Mircher in Paris, running from January 6 to February 24, 2007, challenges the reductive formalist reading of her work. Often pigeonholed as oscillating between abstraction and figuration, her smooth, monochrome surfaces and opaque flatness initially suggest a preoccupation with formal properties inherited from post-Abstract Expressionism. However, Fajfrowska's practice counters this modernist lineage on two fronts: her works are permeable to temporal and mnemonic data, drawing from a reservoir of seemingly insignificant, randomly gathered images, and they engage with themes of body and flesh, deliberately opposing the disembodied dimension championed by Clement Greenberg and his followers. Having long avoided bodily representation, Fajfrowska now confronts the inescapable presence of the body, starting with her own. Even when the body is not explicitly depicted, it resonates through imprints, traces, membranes, furniture, environments, and transitional objects like unsettling stuffed animals. Each painting serves as an index of her own body: the tremors of her gesture in abstract compositions, her movements across horizontal formats, and her scale in full-length portraits. The exhibition's contrasting and captivating hang underscores these choices.