Yvon Lambert's final Paris gallery exhibition features Anna Gaskell and Douglas Gordon

Yvon Lambert's Paris gallery in the Marais, opened in 1986, is closing this December, marking the end of his five-decade career in contemporary art dealing. His final exhibition presents works by American artist Anna Gaskell and Scottish artist Douglas Gordon. Gaskell contributes photographs and films featuring Bolshoi prima ballerina Svetlana Lunkina, who appears in rehearsal for Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet rather than performing Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. In the main film & Juliet (2013), Lunkina performs solo without a partner, breaking character during unsupported lifts while maintaining a direct gaze at the camera. Gaskell previously explored Swan Lake in her 2011 work SOSW Ballet, and Lunkina performed the ballet in Canada last year. Gordon's new works, created within the past year, incorporate taxidermied swan parts and wolves splattered with paint on aluminum sheets or positioned in corners. Some swan elements have detached from their mounts, leaving paint streaks on walls, and one wolf has similarly marked its corner. The gallery describes the exhibition as exploring human duality through themes of love and hate, seduction and violence, life and death. Lambert previously operated galleries in London's Hoxton Square (closed 2009) and New York's Chelsea (opened 2003, closed 2011). Gaskell's work was first shown at Art Basel last summer. The exhibition title references gothic themes though swans dominate visually through both artists' works.