Miss Recuerdo - Tohé et Grichka Commaret
The exhibition
Produced in collaboration with the CluelesS group of female designers at the Pernod Ricard Foundation, under the curatorship of Elsa Vettier, the exhibition Miss Recuerdo (an oxymoron combining the English ‘miss’ for ‘to forget’ and the Spanish ‘recuerdo’ for ‘memory’) is the perfect symbiosis between the works of Grichka and Tohé Commaret, brother and sister artists, painter and film-maker. Attached to their childhood neighbourhood in Vitry-sur-Seine, they have each developed their own language there. The area has become an experimental backdrop for their work. A graduate of the Beaux-Arts in Paris, Tohé has won several prizes at international festivals for her work exploring the sensitive imaginations of her protagonists. As for her brother Grichka, he has exhibited his paintings, scattered with "‘common’ references"[1], on numerous occasions in France, Germany and Switzerland. Here, they evoke abstract models of the streets of his childhood.
In this overall visual and sound composition, the narratives merge and respond to each other, depicting fragments of memory of the characters portrayed. These snatches of memory punctuate the short films on show, such as 8[2] and Pukyu[3]. These films, made without a script, invite the actors and actresses themselves to create the substance and depth of the people they portray. The characters are plunged into a state of cognitive dissonance, between ‘current reality’ and ‘desired reality’.The obsession with escaping the drudgery of existence becomes irrepressible. This is borne out by extracts from the film Palma[4], co-written by the artists, which introduces Paloma, the protagonist, before she disappears. In the back shop where her friend works, she is intrigued by a radio interview: a surgeon explains that he has invented a revolutionary procedure to change the destiny of his patients by redrawing the lines of their hands. Will she give in?
Grichka's paintings resonate with these photograms. By spraying paint onto computer-generated stencils, he creates the backdrops in which the events unfold. Simulating lift shafts, air vents and dimly lit lampposts, his paintings weave together the elements of the urban landscape, often in the form of networks seen from the sky.In this way, he creates a macroscopic vision of the environment that he remakes from his memories.These aerial views are sometimes punctuated by an eye, a mouth or an ear, concealing the mute echoes of the people who live there, imbued with the city's brutalist structures.
Marie Tuffou
[1] Press kit, portrait of Grichka Commaret, Miss Recuerdo exhibition, Pernod Ricard Foundation, 2025
[2] Tohé Commaret, 8, 2022, video, 20'. Courtesy of the artist
[3] Tohé Commaret, Pukyu, 2025, video, 10'. Courtesy of the artist and Les Volcans
[4] Grichka Commaret and Tohé Commaret, Palma (Extract), 2025, video, 9'. Courtesy of the artists and Anna Lena Films
In this overall visual and sound composition, the narratives merge and respond to each other, depicting fragments of memory of the characters portrayed. These snatches of memory punctuate the short films on show, such as 8[2] and Pukyu[3]. These films, made without a script, invite the actors and actresses themselves to create the substance and depth of the people they portray. The characters are plunged into a state of cognitive dissonance, between ‘current reality’ and ‘desired reality’.The obsession with escaping the drudgery of existence becomes irrepressible. This is borne out by extracts from the film Palma[4], co-written by the artists, which introduces Paloma, the protagonist, before she disappears. In the back shop where her friend works, she is intrigued by a radio interview: a surgeon explains that he has invented a revolutionary procedure to change the destiny of his patients by redrawing the lines of their hands. Will she give in?
Grichka's paintings resonate with these photograms. By spraying paint onto computer-generated stencils, he creates the backdrops in which the events unfold. Simulating lift shafts, air vents and dimly lit lampposts, his paintings weave together the elements of the urban landscape, often in the form of networks seen from the sky.In this way, he creates a macroscopic vision of the environment that he remakes from his memories.These aerial views are sometimes punctuated by an eye, a mouth or an ear, concealing the mute echoes of the people who live there, imbued with the city's brutalist structures.
Marie Tuffou
[1] Press kit, portrait of Grichka Commaret, Miss Recuerdo exhibition, Pernod Ricard Foundation, 2025
[2] Tohé Commaret, 8, 2022, video, 20'. Courtesy of the artist
[3] Tohé Commaret, Pukyu, 2025, video, 10'. Courtesy of the artist and Les Volcans
[4] Grichka Commaret and Tohé Commaret, Palma (Extract), 2025, video, 9'. Courtesy of the artists and Anna Lena Films
When
18/02/2025 - 19/04/2025