After last week’s features on brushwork-rich surfaces and thick textures, we’re moving to smooth, silky renderings and the thin, flowing application of paint on the canvas. We’re definitely staying in the realm of bright, vibrant colors, which is the 2nd most distinctive quality of a new body of paintings comprising Alexis Ralaivao’s UK debut with Pilar Corrias Gallery in London. And we will get to the 1st one too...

Btw, I urge you to check the scale of these in the install photos and the Easter eggs he hides on the backs of his canvases. 

In recent years, the French artist has built a reputation for great sensitivity in the atmospheric portrayal of precious moments in life. I’m not talking about the wide-angle views of events, but rather the particular niceties that can make a moment feel treasured. After initially portraying scenes from his personal life in a slightly muted palette, he started reducing the palette towards grayscale, creating a more timeless, if not cinematic, feel around the images. Simultaneously, he started zooming in on the observed, adding more focus and more tension to the visuals, all while keeping that smooth, silky way of rendering the subject matter. Whether pearls, cutlery, drapery, or a part of the body, Ralaivao transforms it into a romantic vista, a dreamlike vision rather than a raw portrayal.

And in his current body of work, these concepts are taken further. The palette shifted to saturated colors, and the zooming-in moved to a more vague, indiscernible detail. Thinking of minimalist compositions by Ellsworth Kelly, Suzan Frecon, or Robert Mangold, the collars, skirt’s hem, or ruffles on a shirt became abstract forms in his way of Flirter avec l’abstrait (Flirting with the abstract). And while I love the idea of pushing representation and figuration so close to abstraction without ever leaving it, what I especially like is the contemporary technical undertone of these. Thinking of infinite digital Zoomquilt visuals, these compositions feel like zooming-in on a 17th-century Dutch painting, without sacrificing quality or level of rendering. —Saša Bogojev

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Flirter avec l'abstrait, © Alexis Ralaivao, Courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London
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Flirter avec l'abstrait, © Alexis Ralaivao, Courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London
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Flirter avec l'abstrait, © Alexis Ralaivao, Courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London
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Detail view of Certitude absolue, doute constant, 2026, Oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm © Alexis Ralaivao, Courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London
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Les écrits spontanés, 2025, Oil on canvas, 200 x 150 x 4.5 cm© Alexis Ralaivao, Courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London
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Certitude absolue, doute constant, 2026, Oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm © Alexis Ralaivao, Courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London

Alexis Ralaivao's Flirter avec l'abstrait is on view at Pilar Corrias Gallery in London through May 23, 2026