Sobering Galerie presents the first solo exhibition of Isidore Bishop-Sauve. At just 25 years old, the artist has already developed a highly distinctive pictorial language, in which an intimate and sensitive form of figuration meets a free, direct, and spontaneous handling of paint.
For this new body of work, Bishop-Sauve takes, among other references, the film The Go-Between (1971) as a point of departure. In it, he finds themes that run deeply through his own practice: the loss of innocence, the passage into adulthood, masculinity, the desire for intimacy, and the difficulty of making oneself fully accessible to another.
His male figures are never quite self-portraits. Rather, they function as possible doubles, projections through which the artist explores the construction of the self, the sense of belonging, and the constant tension between the desire to reveal oneself and the instinct to remain protected. His characters often seem caught in in-between moments: absorbed, contemplative, vulnerable, at times almost absent from themselves.
This fragility of the subjects stands in contrast to a painting practice that remains intensely alive. Bishop-Sauve does not seek to smooth or polish the image: his brushwork remains visible, fluid, and at times almost sketch-like. Forms are built through areas of flat color, rapid gestures, zones left more open, and shifts in texture and materiality. In both his portraits and interior scenes, this freedom of execution introduces a particular sense of immediacy, as though the image retained something of the moment of its emergence.
Color also plays a central role. Inspired in particular by the greens and whites of The Go-Between, the palette places the bodies in tension with their surroundings. Nature becomes at once a refuge, a space for projection, and a place of solitude; the city, meanwhile, appears as the territory of the desire for connection, but also of the difficulty of achieving it.
From one canvas to the next, however, the figures seem to respond to one another. Isolated within their own spaces, they gradually form a kind of silent community. They draw closer, turn away, hide, expose themselves. This succession of gestures and withdrawals gives the ensemble an almost narrative dimension, without ever imposing a single story.
For this first solo exhibition, Isidore Bishop-Sauve thus brings together a body of work that is as much a fragmented self-portrait as it is an observation of a generation. A painting of the in-between: between proximity and distance, confidence and vulnerability, the desire to be seen and the need to disappear.
