CLAUDIO COLTORTI | long time, no see

We are pleased to present the first solo show of painter Claudio Coltorti at the gallery, on view from September 5 to October 10, 2026.

«I, who spin under the hand of another
safe neither in the evening nor in the morning,
for he beneath whose hand I turn reverses course
so suddenly that he waits neither for
today, nor tomorrow.»

Written by the 15th-century royal magistrate and poet Henri Baude during the reign of Charles VII, this poem is said to capture the weariness of submission in the face of arbitrary
elite power. Baude intended the verse – along with several others – to be woven directly into tapestries. The surviving piece can be viewed today at Paris’s Musée de Cluny.

Claudio Coltorti has seen it.

Claudio paints with a fierce velocity; one must visit his studio to truly witness it. Fleeting apparitions emerge as canvases follow one another in rapid succession. He takes a piece
up, sets it down, leaves it to rest, digesting his subject. Initially, a desire to represent something takes hold, which he then relentlessly strives to push away. The motif fractures from one canvas to the next. There is never an original, only derivations; at times, the artist himself can barely discern his own intent.
As the paint dries, the subject begins to declare itself. It becomes clear that his studio practice is a form of somatisation. He allows obsession to take root, confronting himself within a state of infinite degeneration. The telluric nature of his forms and colours is a quest into the subconscious – a realm his canvases summon him to enter.

The Cluny tapestry depicting Baude’s poem shows a hand descending from above, casting spinning tops onto a chequered platform. One remains upright, while others lie scattered across the floor. Visiting Cluny on 2 June 2026, I watched Claudio become a spinning top himself.

At first glance, Claudio’s painting appears soft, enchanting. We lose ourselves entirely in the sinuous grace of his line. Yet beneath this apparent gentleness, the heavy movement of the world soon comes into view. The permanently distinct coexists with the fleetingly obscure. Looking at his canvases, it is tempting to see only blurriness, but his forms are in fact sharply delineated. His painting brings disparate temporalities into convergence: it is a flat circle where tops must spin rapidly to stay upright. The substrates of classical Italy, with their improbable palette, resurface here – an alchemy of ancient times manifested through pigments reborn from arcane mixtures. All of this dances in service of the infra-world. Hands reach out, feeling their way to find bodies to soothe. There is the unspeakable and the un-concealable – and the trembling top grows less distinct. The eye of a friend may witness shameful deeds, yet it offers safety by evening as by morning.

long time, no see is a reminiscence of friendship, a surging of the heart before an arid future. It is the joy of igniting the final blaze.

Pierre Le Dauphin
Translation by Sadie Fletcher

Photos Max Borderie

Vernissage : 05/09/2026 4:00 pm