Reprise is a word that exists in both English and French—a return, a repeating gesture, a fragment echoing the whole, especially in music.
In French, reprise suggests picking something back up where it was left, carrying with it a sense of interruption, of something paused and resumed.
This exhibition leans toward the English resonance of the word, exploring how repetition—of a phrase, a soundtrack, a train ride, a good or bad habit—can carry meaning, memory, and transformation.
Ceal Floyer’s 2002 sound piece reverberates alongside Bach’s Goldberg Variations, composed in 1741, interpreted by Glenn Gould in 1956, and later hauntingly fictionalized in Thomas Bernhard’s 1983 novel “The Loser”.
The notion that cinema allows us to come to terms with life’s repetitions runs through the works of Deborah-Joyce Holman, Judith Eisler, Asha Schechter, Nanténé Traoré, Joseph Zehrer, Noémie Degen, and Simon Jaton.
Even Alexandra Noel reflects on repetition in her paintings: “I don’t often paint people, but I’m thinking about them while I’m painting, so maybe they’re infused in them somehow. It’s like watching a film made up of the same frame repeated again and again. I’m waiting for the actor to appear or for something to move. There’s a light behind it, and I can hear the film physically moving, but the screen is static.”
Repetition dreams of repair and healing—like the utterance of a word in psychoanalysis, but also through contemplation, through routine, through motion, through change.
Judith Eisler recalls Kierkegaard’s paradox: “The irony of repetition lies in the fact that it is inherently unrepeatable. The very act of trying to repeat something transforms it, making it a new experience. This highlights the difficulty of capturing the essence of a past moment.”
- Julie Boukobza
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Ceal Floyer, courtesy: Esther Schipper, Berlin.
Deborah-Joyce Holman, courtesy: Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zurich.
Alexandra Noel, courtesy: Crèvecœur, Paris.
Nanténé Traoré, courtesy: Sultana, Paris.
Joseph Zehrer, courtesy: Galerie Nagel Draxler, Cologne.
Image: "Close-up", 2024. Deborah Joyce Holman. Film still. Courtesy of the artist