Charles Hascoët
“Kobayashi Maru”
New York, 130 Orchard Street
Do you remember that pungent citrus smell of Calvin Klein One cologne that permeated the 1990s? For New York-based Parisian artist Charles Hascoët, the unisex CK One elicits olfactory memories of hope and innocence. In his debut solo show at Perrotin New York, Kobayashi Maru, Hascoët presents Giorgio Morandi-like still lifes featuring frosted glass flasks of CK One, colorful barbell- shaped Listerine bottles, and other curios that are unmistakably of an era and its sensual pleasures promised by the famous motto of “Purity. Unity. Sensuality.” And if these indelible mass-market 90s elixirs are not nostalgia-provoking enough, a small 2018 portrait of the cult underground electronic music artist Bogdan Raczynski wearing the t-shirt "Rave till you cry" will send you back to the 90s “happiness and respect” Rave culture in no time!
Installation view of 'Kobayashi Maru' (2024). Photographer: Guillaume Ziccarelli.
Hascoët was raised in Paris and classically trained in painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris, from which he graduated in 2014, a school known for its traditional, rigorous approach. He belongs to a generation of artists—perhaps one of the last—whose fine art education was realized through in-person art critiques and studio visits, with work shared and viewed up close. Painting for Hascoët and his cohort was still painterly, an experience of lingering oil paint smells in messy object-filled ateliers— and not yet flattened by pocket-sized screens, NFTs, and the promiscuous interchangeability of viewing art on social media platforms.
Indeed, Hascoët’s paintings cannot be fully appreciated until you have seen the brushstrokes, forms and textures up close. In addition to his desire to follow the tradition of figuration by extending it gesturally and abstractly, the art historical references informing his work further announce that Hascoët is a painter’s painter. In this body of work alone the attentive viewer will spot references to a wide range of figurative painters such as the 19th century French Romantic Eugene Delacroix’s reclining figures and self-portraits to Richard Diebenkorn and David Park’s mid-20th century Bay Area Figurative style portraits, still lifes, rich brushstrokes and palettes
