Magalie Guérin Shape Acts

Press Release

Opening Reception: November 6, 2025 | 6-8pm

In the North Gallery, Corbett vs. Dempsey is delighted to announce Shape Acts, an exhibition of new ceramic sculptures and drawings by Magalie Guérin. This is Guérin's fourth solo show at the gallery and her first presentation primarily focused on ceramics.

In the domain of linguistics known as speech act theory, language is considered more than just a conveyor of information, it is an action. Speech not only says, it does. So, too, with the forms and textures and colors of Guérin's work. Known initially as a painter, the Marfa, Texas-based artist has been making 3-D work avidly since the start of the pandemic, and this fresh group of tabletop sculptures finds her pushing the limits on morphological invention, introducing new shapes into her vast vocabulary. These pieces are segmented, often with a totemic composition – juxtaposed parts are stacked together and resolve in impossible seeming ways, all within the space of a 12-inch tower. Varying textures are emphasized with different glazes, applied with a painter's hand and eye. Passing references to figures or vessels or creatures or landscapes may appear, but these are equally offset by an overall sense of abstract delight, the surfaces a joy and a mystery, the flashes of bright color intimating something possibly naughty, the crevices and buttes a juicy question mark. Guérin's formal ingenuity allows these talismans a kind of transformative mojo that might spur us to coin "shape act theory" as a new art historical domain. As a 2-D point of comparison with her ceramics, Guérin has chosen to show a suite of drawings made during a 2021 summer ceramic residency at the University of Arkansas.These drawings for Guérin were a playful daily practice done as a way to discover shapes without the pressure of gravity, resulting in vividly colored marker works, hovering like a paper flock of imagined kinfolk for the dimensional works.

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