For her third solo show with the gallery, Aglaé Bassens brings together figures, landscapes and interiors. In The Feeling is Mutual, Bassens reflects upon her use of subjective imagery as a vehicle for collective emotion.
Sonder: n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk. - John Koenig, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
For her third solo exhibition with the gallery, Aglaé Bassens brings together figures, landscapes and interiors. In The Feeling is Mutual, Bassens reflects upon her use of subjective imagery as a vehicle for collective emotion. Inspired by the turning of the seasons, the exhibition centers on the ultimate shared narrative: the passing of time.
Aglaé Bassens sources her imagery from her own archive of photographs. The filmic quality and composition of her paintings lure us in with the promise of narrative, but the plot remains elusive and fragmented. Bassens’ paintings have the authenticity of personal memories cobbled together from intuition. The result is a collection of innermost glances in which the viewer recognizes his or her own emotional experience. While the works conjure feelings of loneliness or estrangement, they also offer understanding and companionship in our collective search for meaning. The Feeling Is Mutual exemplifies the enigmatic coexistence of intimacy and distance, familiarity and incongruity which lies at the heart of Bassens’ work.
Aglaé Bassens (b. 1986, Belgium) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She has a BA in Fine Art from the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University (2007) and an MFA in Fine Art Painting from the Slade School of Fine Art, London (2011). Solo exhibitions include Empty Threats, 12.26, Dallas (2021), Sincerely, at Hesse Flatow, New York (2020), Surface Tension at Nars Foundation, Brooklyn (2018), You Can See Better From Here at CRUSH Curatorial, New York (2018) and Front Parting, Cabin Gallery London (2016). Recent group shows include Shifted Horizons, Hesse Flatow, New York (2021), This is Water, Workplace, London (2021), Fête Galante, Heaven Gallery, Chicago (2020), Still Here, Newington Gallery, London (2019), and Chains, Central Park Gallery, Los Angeles (2019). Her work is featured in New American Paintings No 134 Northeast Issue, and in 100 Painters of Tomorrow published by Thames and Hudson (2014).
