Group show
Summer! — Group Exhibition at Taste Contemporary
Group Exhibition at Taste Contemporary
From 2 July to 1 August 2026, I had the opportunity to participate in Summer!, a group exhibition at Taste Contemporary in Geneva, Switzerland. The exhibition brought together ten artists whose works explored the energy and atmosphere of summer through painting, sculpture and mixed media, with themes of light, movement, transformation and escapeI presented a selection of works from The Diner, my ongoing series exploring American popular iconography through a visual language that moves between abstraction and figuration.
Taste Contemporary
Rue du Vieux-Billard 7
1205 Geneva, Switzerland
The Diner
In The Diner, I am interested in the diner as an emblematic American space and in what it reveals about collective life. More than a familiar image of American culture, the diner functions as a social microcosm — a place where people of different ages, backgrounds and stories meet without hierarchy. Its architecture, nocturnal lights and distinctive atmosphere draw on a broader visual culture shaped by films, photography and personal memories. The diner becomes an imagined environment, both comforting and timeless, existing somewhere between lived experience and collective memory.
Figures of a Collective World
Characters such as The Crispin Family and Young Glazebury appear as stylised figures and archetypes of the diner’s patrons. Rather than individual portraits, they form a gallery of recurring presences that inhabit this shared space. Faces, objects and elements of the diner are reconstructed through volumes. Each volume acts as a minimal visual unit, a module through which the image is built. This process creates a tension between abstraction and recognition, reducing familiar forms while allowing them to remain identifiable.
A Modular Language
This modular approach has become central to my practice. Since 2024, I have developed my work around the principle of constructing faces, objects and spaces from a single elementary form. This self-imposed constraint allows me to examine how we recognise the familiar and how visual systems, cultural signs and collective imagery influence our perception. Through simplified compositions, I seek to reveal the structures and associations hidden within everyday forms.
Between Memory and Imagination
Although The Diner is rooted in a specific American visual culture, the series is not concerned with political commentary. Instead, I focus on the universal qualities of the diner: a place to eat, wait, meet and exist among others. Presented within Summer!, the series becomes an invitation to enter an imagined America, one constructed from fragments of popular culture, personal memory and collective visual experience.
