Camille Henrot on Human Conditioning at Hauser & Wirth Exhibition ‘A Number of Things’
The exhibition is on view at Hauser & Wirth in Chelsea until April 12.
1263 / 3612 (Abacus). Photography by Stefan Altenburger
For Camille Henrot, mixed-media artworks and installations are the perfect expressions of the coexistence of human conditioning, societal standards, imagination, human nature, and rules versus exception. In her newest and first major exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in Chelsea, A Number of Things, the French artist brings together various artwork series to acknowledge simply how difficult and complex it can be to navigate life while challenging and questioning everything.
A Number of Things features Henrot’s series Abacus (2024) and Dos and Don’ts (2021). Abacus reflects on how society drives the blossoming sense of imagination and is presented alongside newer small-scale works. Dos and Don’ts is Henrot’s ongoing series of prints, paintings, and collages displaying excerpts from etiquette books and computer screenshots with a bold play of gesture, texture, color, and trompe l’oeil. This exhibition has a floor intervention created in collaboration with Charlap Hyman & Herrero, a New York and Los Angeles-based architectural design firm.
As you enter the gallery, sculptures of dogs are tied to a pole. This is reminiscent of dog owners walking into a grocery store and leaving their dogs outside unattended while they shop (dogs are prohibited in any food establishment). The dogs are constructed with steel wool, aluminum sheets, carved wood, wax, chain, and other unique materials. They represent the impacts of human design, domestication, dependency, and attachment, which are translated and mirrored through dogs’ roles in our lives.
Image Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth and Camille Henrot
From the 1980s to the 2000s, bead mazes were among the most popular children’s toys. These simple toys help develop a child’s fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and spatial awareness. They were often found in doctor’s offices, nursery schools, and the homes of young families. Henrot reflects on this in her newest work, Abacus. Several juxtaposed pieces made of bronze challenge the ideas of self-optimization, the cyclical nature of human development and learning, and how our imaginations often become controlled by societal standards. This is seen through abstracted scaled and towering figures of various abacuses and giant children’s toy keys lying on the floor.
“The codes of conduct in literature, children’s books, texts in general, and films too, all have narratives with a purpose of communicating about social structures and how we live together,” Henrot says. “If you look at the cartoons for kids today, they say you need to be kind and be part of a team. There is a message being communicated there about how social structures stay in place. The abacus, in a way, is the opposite. It’s a toy with zero human figures and no connection to the everyday world. Abacus plays the role of opening a road for possibilities, and Do’s and Don’ts play the role of a social critique or social analysis.”
73 / 37 (Abacus). Photography by Nicolas Brasseur
Dos and Don’ts tackle the arduous forms of human conditioning, everything from codes of conduct, laws, notions of authority, civility, and conformity. Layered paintings of collaged fragments include invoices from an embryology lab, a note conjugating the German verb ‘to be;’ dental X-rays, digital error messages, children’s school homework, to-do lists, and more. Henrot has centered much of her work around the topic of organizing and categorizing information, beginning with her 2013 film, Grosse Fatigue. There is a sense of juxtaposition in this series as well, recognizing that social identity can be performative while also finding beauty in emotional security, behavioral mimicry, and groupthink.
“I grew interested in this idea of the computer having a code the same way we humans have a code,” Henrot says. “We have code for our behavior, and in the same way humans made the computer code, the behavioral code was also made by us. This is an interesting conversation to have right now because we feel we’ve never been as social or as exposed to each other. With social media, we have so many channels for observing each other’s behavior; we can comment on it, or we can be commented on or judged. The old-school etiquette manuals, though problematic in their own way, have some kind of benevolence in them. Here is a guide for how to relate to one another and how to share space. We don’t see enough of this these days.”
Image Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth and Camille Henrot
Although A Number of Things acknowledges contrasting subjects, Henrot relates them all back to the simple yet complex inevitability of growing up, integrating into society, developing etiquette, and challenging and questioning everything.
“We, as a society, have the ability to change the norm and change the rules constantly,” Henrot says. “The rules are things we decide in order for it to be pleasant and doable to live together. I think that’s an important point. I also hope people think about their own childhood and also think about how it’s ambivalent to love and be loved, how the sense of belonging is something fragile but, at the same time, has a dark side.”
