Gabrielle Conilh de Beyssac

Gabrielle Conilh de Beyssac born in 1986 in Ottawa, grew up in Canada and in Mali. She studied fine art in Nice, at the Villa Arson Art School and at ENSBA (Fine Art School of Paris). In 2008, she did an artist residency and a group show entitled Quartiers libres in Bamako with Vincent Barré’s and Richard Deacon’s studios. In 2011, she obtained a scholarship to study at the Emily Carr institute of art and design in Vancouver, Canada. In 2012, Gabrielle Conilh de Beyssac was rewarded with the Thaddaeus Ropac and the Clermont-Tonerre Foundation Prizes (Friends of ENSBA association) and she participated to the winners’ exhibition 25m papillon at the Rosenblum Foundation. After she did a residency at the Kerguehennec Art Centre (Brittany, FR), she continued her researches in Canada during another residency (EST-NORD-EST, in Quebec). In 2014, she received a grant from the CNAP (National Visual Art Center) for a solo show at Galerie Maubert : Corps astro sensible, and she exhibited in the gardens of the newly restored Picasso Museum of Paris for its reopening. In 2015, she exhibited at the Modern Art Museum ARTEUM in Châteauneuf-le-Rouge, Aix-en-Provence. Late 2016, Gabrielle Conilh de Beyssac set up three monumental sculptures, entitled Labours A B C, realized with Jules Guissart, as part of the 2016 edition of the Vent des Forêts (Meuse, FR). In 2017, she exhibited Hamac-déposition in the exhibition Hungry for design during the international week for design in Milan. In 2018, Gabrielle Conilh de Beyssac is part of the exhibition //DEVENIR// 10 artistes en quête de sens at the Collège des Bernardins, after a year of research seminar. She also received the Ora Ito prize at the first edition of the International Biennale of Saint-Paul de Vence. In 2019, she created a 500m2 stone labyrinth, a four-year project in the park of a private castle in Burgundy. In addition, the Center Pompidou gives her carte blanche to design two traveling educational workshops (Paris-Brussels-Shanghai). In 2020, the FRAC Alsace bought three of her works, including Hamac déposition, exhibited the same year at the FRAC Franche-Comté for the exhibition Dancing Machines.

Since September 2021, she teaches sculpture at ESADSE (Fine Art and Design School of Saint-Etienne, FR). In 2022, she set up a couple of permanent sculptures on the heights of Saint-Restitut (Drôme, FR), on the occasion of her solo show entitled Regard at the CAC (Contemporary Art Center) in Lithos (FR). She was invited to engage in a dialogue with the works from Albers Honnegger’s donation in the permanent exhibition FILIATION 2 at Espace de l’Art Concret (Mouans Sartoux, FR). 

She lives and works at Pont de Barret (Drôme, FR).

 

Gabrielle Conilh de Beyssac’s work is about exploring the relationship between sculpture or drawing and space. She often calls on the spectators’ bodies, as strollers or as actors. Some works have to be walked on or visited, whether others have to be activated, grasped, used or displaced. The artist wishes to underline the passage from the world of the Ideas to the world of Substances and Forces through preliminary drawings and the use of plain shapes. Gabrielle Conilh de Beyssac’s works are experienced in their physical aspect by spectators. They engage them in both sensitive and concrete experiences. Some sculptures leave behind graphic or audio marks in their space of setting.