Review of Niki de Saint Phalle: Je Suis Une Vache Suisse at Omer Tiroche Contemporary Art

30/07/16

Niki de Saint Phalle: Je Suis Une Vache Suisse

Omer Tiroche Contemporary Art

17 June – 10 September 2016

At first sight, Omer Tiroche Contemporary Art is filled with a menagerie of joyful, celebratory and colourful works: gouache paintings and crayon drawings; sculptures and reliefs studded with coloured glass mosaic; ornate mirrors and intricate yet simple jewellery – all infused with a sense of playfulness and naivety, like that of a child. But look more closely and there is more to the works on display than meets the eye: a gorilla with a gaping hole where his internal organs – including his heart – should be; serpents; skulls; and a satisfied lion, recently having feasted on a man, whose shirt and shoes lay abandoned by the miniature settee. Catherine Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint Phalle, or Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) as she became known, had a traumatic early life, which later unavoidably fed into her artwork, making it more worldy-wise and complex than it might at first seem.

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