Marie Jacotey

Marie Jacotey draws inspiration from human interactions and the expression of emotions in various contexts, including architecture, landscape, and environment. Her paintings examine details such as wallpaper, furniture, clothes, patterns, patinas, and textures. Despite using manual techniques such as painting on plaster and dust sheets, making pencil drawings, using soft pastel on Japanese paper, and sewing fabrics, her pieces incorporate perspectives that allude to the realm of film, slow-motion, and the photographer's viewpoint. Jacotey's practice focuses more on lyrical expression rather than political commentary, featuring stylized visuals that tell personal, diary-like stories about relatable situations, sexuality, everyday relationships, and the female body. Her work conveys a narrative through accompanying fragments of text sourced from various places, including books by Henry Miller and snippets of conversations overheard in cafes or between friends. She also borrows imagery from Instagram, which is particularly noteworthy given the platform's role in shaping and reflecting how women experience and portray their lives online. ...

Ballon Rouge began as a nomadic gallery in September of 2017. In our first two years we put up exhibitions in Istanbul, London, Los Angeles, Brussels, Sao Paulo, Paris, and New York. Each of the cities we visited was stewarded by a ‘collective member’ - a curator who introduced us to artists and to their respective city’s art scene. In March of 2019 we made Brussels our home city, inaugurating our permanent space. While we will continue to do shows abroad alongside our collective members, our primary location is now Brussels. Besides our own exhibitions, the space in Brussels sometimes hosts invited international galleries to show with us in exchange for a show of ours at theirs - a further continuation of our ethos of collaboration and collectivity. So far we have collaborated or will soon collaborate with Hannah Barry Gallery (London); Melange (Cologne); Galerist (Istanbul); Gallery Artbeat, (Tbilisi); the Pill (Istanbul); Pi Artworks (Istanbul, London); Vitrine (London, Basel). ...