Mitterrand
Katja Schenker , Suisse
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"French Vermillon"
Mitterrand is pleased to present “French Vermilion”, a solo exhibition by Swiss artist Katja Schenker, whose practice unfolds across performance, drawing, sculpture, and installation. For more than two decades,
Schenker has explored the relationship between body, matter, and space, often working with natural materials whose sensory qualities intersect with spatial and temporal dimensions such as context, scale,
and transformation.
Working from themes of corporeality and bodily perception, Schenker investigates spaces that she both occupies and generates. Physical action frequently becomes the starting point of form: materials such as concrete, pigment, or textile are subjected to movement, pressure, and friction, allowing gestures to leave visible traces.
The exhibition brings together works that extend this investigation across different mediums. The video dress (Chengdu) documents a performance originally conceived in collaboration with Zurichbased fashion designer Julian Zigerli and first presented during a fashion show before being adapted to institutional contexts. In the work, the artist wears a rigid concrete structure suspended from her shoulders, whose solidity gradually fractures through movement.
The drawings from the series auslaufen, produced during the artist’s residency at the Istituto Svizzero in Rome, unfold in spiraling lines traced in a single continuous gesture, generating spaces that oscillate between interior and exterior. The paintings from the series Could Be You, Still introduce intense vermilion tones, evoking both the material presence of pigments and the corporeal dimension that runs throughout her work.
Moving between gesture and structure, resistance and transformation, Schenker’s works suggest that form is never fixed but emerges through processes in which the body becomes both a tool and a site of inscription. Schenker will also present a solo exhibition at the Museum Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich from June 4 to September 6, 2026.
Solo show of Katja Schenker
From April 10 to June 6, 2026
The gallery will be closed on Sunday May 31, 2026
The gallery
Founded in 1988 by Jean-Gabriel Mitterrand and now presided over by Edward Mitterrand, Mitterrand gallery operates from two Paris locations: at 95 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, in a 1932 building whose spaces were redesigned in October 2024 by Belgian architect Bernard Dubois, and at 79 rue du Temple, in a 17th-century hôtel particulier in the Marais district.
Initially dedicated to contemporary sculpture, the gallery gradually expanded its program to include works by historical artists active from the 1950s onward.
Since its creation, Mitterrand gallery has championed the work of French artists and those based in France such as Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Anne and Patrick Poirier, Agustín Cárdenas, and Marta Pan, as well as international artists including Edi Hila, Allan McCollum, Tony Oursler, and Peter Kogler. It also works closely with the estates of Dennis Oppenheim, Francisco Sobrino, and Keith Sonnier to offer new perspectives on their legacies.
The gallery has always been committed to promoting works that are essential to our understanding of contemporary art. In recent years, it has incorporated into its program younger artists from diverse backgrounds and geographies, such as Wallen Mapondera, Katja Schenker, and Raphaël Zarka, reflecting the diversity and rich complexity of 21st-century creative processes. These new collaborations have fostered a dynamic intergenerational dialogue, highlighting the many paradoxes of a world that is both interconnected and fractured.
Gallery artists
Sergio Camargo Estate, Agustín Cárdenas Estate, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Niki De Saint Phalle Foundation, Edi Hila, Peter Kogler, Claude Lalanne, François-Xavier Lalanne, Wallen Mapondera, Allan McCollum, Dennis Oppenheim Estate, Tony Oursler, Marta Pan Foundation, Anne et Patrick Poirier, Katja Schenker, Francisco Sobrino Estate, Keith Sonnier Estate, Mark Di Suvero, Rob Wynne, Raphaël Zarka
