November 12 - December 1, 2024
📍Salon 21, 52 Greene Street, Floor 3, New York, NY, 10013
decorative frame

Salon 21 is pleased to present “The Cat Wife,” a joint exhibition by Morgane Richer La Flèche and Janie Korn, opening to the public on Tuesday, November 12, 2024. This exhibition reimagines a 17th-century French fable to tell a story about the recklessness of desire and the magic of the body.

The Cat Wife is a psychological portrait of the muse in Richer La Flèche’s works, blending the magical and the mundane. In these works, Richer La Flèche shares a fanged vision of bodily autonomy and female sexuality, reframing contemporary discussions about identity and self-determination. These paintings predominantly feature a woman and a cat together, symbolizing their intertwined nature. What starts as a provocative fantasy turns into a celebration of feminine complexity and possibility.

Janie Korn’s sculptures offer a tangible interpretation of what is absent from the fable, particularly how the man’s actions could have triggered the magical transformation. Each hand-sculpted and hand-painted potion vessel and anointing candle is meticulously crafted, reflecting ceremonial rituals, inspired by the alchemy that underpins the fable. Having collaborated previously on several successful exhibitions, these artists bring their combined visions and artistic synergy to “The Cat Wife,” creating a rich, immersive experience for viewers.

Featuring:

Click to expand artist bios.

Janie Korn

Janie Korn is an American, London-based contemporary artist whose intricate candle sculptures delve into the ephemerality of memory and the richness of folklore. Through her meticulous wax creations, she captures the transient power of recollections, which, like her sculptures, gradually melt away. Influenced by storytelling traditions, each piece is a fragment of the real and imagined lore. Korn's evocative work has been featured in numerous exhibitions, inviting audiences to reflect on the delicate interplay between impermanence and myth. Her most recent body of works explore folklore from within. Using hand built ceramics, she re-imagines artifacts that would be found inside the imaginary palaces and kingdoms of these same fairytale stories. These pieces are patinated to appear as recently discovered relics.

Morgane Richer La Flèche

Morgane Richer La Flèche is a Canadian-born, New York-based multidisciplinary artist. A self-taught artist, she works primarily in oil paint, pastels, soft sculpture, and video. She is inspired by the world-building of Florine Stettheimer and Lewis Carroll, the theatrical arts, lyric poetry, French literature, her Catholic upbringing, body horror, and the Rococo period. Her work is visceral, as in pink for flesh and red for blood, as in decadence of excess but also of decay and decomposition. Whether in paint, pastel or wool felt, her textures are simultaneously viscous and diaphanous. While her paintings are steeped in narrative, she plays with abstraction to create sinister landscapes that are always swirling, deteriorating and melding—a nod to hyperspace, virtual realities, and the architecture of cathedrals arching towards heaven.

Shop works from The Cat Wife:

Shop Full Exhibition

A Prayer for Harvest product photo
Janie Korn

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Angel Roof of East Anglia product photo
Janie Korn

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Botanical Elixir product photo
Janie Korn

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Calling on the Bugs product photo
Janie Korn

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Cat wife twilight product photo
Morgane Richer La Flèche

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Cat wife valentine product photo
Morgane Richer La Flèche

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Danse Macabre product photo
Janie Korn

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Dreamland product photo
Janie Korn

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Fable Disc product photo
Janie Korn

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Falconry product photo
Janie Korn

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