CLAIRE TABOURET: Moonlight Shadow

Night Gallery is thrilled to present Moonlight Shadow, an exhibition of new paintings by Claire Tabouret. This marks the artist’s third solo show with the gallery, following Eclipse (2017) and The Pull of the Sun (2020). The exhibition coincides with the announcement that Tabouret has been commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron and Paris Archbishop Laurent Ulrich to design six new stained glass windows for the iconic Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Tabouret will collaborate with Atelier Simon-Marq on this historic project, which is slated for completion and installation by late 2026.

Sleep and its absence inspire Claire Tabouret’s newest body of work. The exhibition title is drawn from Mike Oldfield’s 1983 song Moonlight Shadow, in which the musician sings: “The trees that whisper in the evening / Carried away by a moonlight shadow / Sing the song of sorrow and grieving / Carried away by a moonlight shadow.” With a similar sense of repetition and theme, Tabouret also reflects on loss, nocturnal mysteries, and the progression of time.

Drawing from personal and found photographs, Tabouret creates wistful compositions through her signature layering of paint. Some works are marked by drips and thinned-out washes. Day-glo underpaintings and timeworn finishes imbue the paintings with both contemporary energy and a sense of nostalgia. These elements find a complement in Tabouret’s new palette, which privileges blues, purples, and earth tones. Self-portraits are a recurring theme throughout the show, playing on subtle changes. As Tabouret explains, “I’m burying and uncovering.”

Tabouret revisits an old motif, the group portrait, in a new large-scale work. She sprays the painting, derived from an historical image of costumed children, with grey-blue liquid paint. The technique further suggests the instability and accretion of memory. Tabouret views this final layer as a blanket both protective and evocative of ash, simultaneously signaling safety and erasure in response to the wildfires sweeping through Los Angeles.

Tabouret continues to draw inspiration from art history. She looks to paintings by Mary Cassatt and Finnish artist Helene Schjerfbeck to inform her own depictions of herself and the others in this liminal space. Portrait of Liona Sleeping features Tabouret’s daughter peacefully asleep in bed under her mother’s loving gaze. Self-Portrait on the Couch at Night, in contrast, depicts the artist sleepless and sprawled atop a blue couch, anxious and hyper-vigilant. In these compositions, dreams and fears coalesce, as in the hallucinatory worlds of Edvard Munch and Léon Spilliaert.

In an almost life-size painting, Tabouret portrays herself holding a sleeping child, as if stepping out of her own painting and onto the studio floor. The artist expertly intertwines creation and care. Within the dreamlike realm of the painting, the boundaries between artist and subject, mother and child, life and art dissolve.