Charlotte Beaudry | Me

We are delighted to present the first solo show in the UK of renowned Belgian painter Charlotte Beaudry. Opening on International Women’s Day, Charlotte Beaudry | Me brings together a selection of twenty paintings spanning the past fifteen years of her practice. This exhibition aims to provide a glimpse into Beaudry’s unique world and celebrate a nuanced view of the female experience.

For the past three decades, Beaudry’s figurative paintings have depicted objects borrowed from popular culture, the everyday and the world of celebrity. From a pair of studio shoes scaled up to dramatic proportions, to a life-size portrait of a beer can, her distinctive iconography is inspired by fragments of reality; novels, films, football games, as well as photographs she takes herself or sources from the Internet. Characteristic of her practice is the way she isolates her subjects and depicts them frontally, as to avoid situating them within any specific context. Filling the entire composition, these objects exist by themselves, suspended in a state of isolation and often blown up to such as a scale that they no longer relate to reality.

This exhibition focuses on works produced between 2008 and 2023, all of which find their origin in autobiographical references yet speak a universal language of determination, defiance, and self-empowerment. Beaudry’s works demonstrate an uncompromising relationship to reality and the range of expression available through oil paint. An interest in the illusory potential of painting has been a constant throughout Beaudry’s career and she calls upon her technical skill to test the limits of the medium, producing figurative works with multiple interpretations.

The tradition of portraiture through the female gaze is a reoccurring theme in Beaudry’s work, which manifested last year in a spectacular public commission entitled Stand Up in the Annie Cordy Tunnel in Brussels (the longest tunnel in Europe). In this major public commission, the walls of the tunnel are adorned with hundreds of images of Beaudry’s portraits of women, comprising two monumental 2.5 km long frescoes that explore the themes of femininity and identity in the public space.

Charlotte Beaudry (b. 1968, lives and works in Brussels) has achieved international acclaim through major exhibitions at WIELS, Brussels; BOZAR, Brussels; BPS22, Charleroi; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; MOCAK, Krakow. Her work is held in the collections of the Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Thalie Art Foundation, Brussels; FMAC, Paris; Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht; K & K Kollektion, Monaco amongst others.

Charlotte Beaudry | Me
8­—19 March 2023
Gallery 11 at Cromwell Place
4 Cromwell Place
London SW7 2JE

FREE entry
Open Tues to Sat 10am—6pm, Sun 10—4pm