Almine Rech

Wishing Leelee Kimmel () a wonderful birthday! To celebrate, we begin we spotlight her work ‘Midnight Duel’ (2022–2024), before revisiting her solo exhibitions with the gallery: ‘The Wilds and the Shore’ at Almine Rech New York in 2024 and ‘Night Ride’ at Almine Rech Shanghai in 2022! Finally, we look at her most recent group exhibition, ‘The Living Room’, presented earlier this year at Reiffers Initiatives in Paris, France.

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‘Kimmel reframes the ongoing question of abstraction as a severely controlled discipline—the art is abstract so it has to be extra tough formally, you know—and the regressive and infantile pleasures in just letting go . . . just. But such regression should never be underestimated; it is a generative and profound force. Kimmel’s paintings traffic in mess and spillage, and there is more than a hint of the nursery room. It’s all very antic and a little bit scary, this loud Kimmel world.’

— David Rimanelli, ‘Leelee Kimmel’, Artforum, 2018

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Leelee Kimmel’s paintings aren’t specifically referential, though there are references to be had: from Miró and Masson to Twombly, Basquiat, Jonathan Lasker. And there’s a strange connection to Philip Guston, too—Kimmel’s abstractions have Guston’s nervous line recrudescences; think of the textures of his forlorn shoes. Kimmel deals in a kind of electrocuted biomorphism that’s descended from Surrealism, but the life’s been polluted by the morph: incandescent amoebas, skittering deep-sea/outer-space/inner-voyage paramecia, flagella, the world of Ernst Haeckel pumped up with unreal colors. Even the pastels are harsh, bright.

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1.Artist portrait, 2022
photo: Charles Roussel

2.Detail of ‘Midnight Duel’, 2022-2024
Acrylic, oil, and oil stick on canvas

3-5. ‘The Wilds and the Shore’, Almine Rech New York, 2024
Photos: Thomas Barratt

6-8.’Night Ride’, Almine Rech Shanghai, 2022
Photos: Rebecca Fanuele

9.Installation of ‘The Living Room’, on view at Reiffers Initiatives, Paris, France from February 26 to March 28, 2026
Photo: Louis Paquin
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Chloe Wise’s solo exhibition in Switzerland ‘Extrasensory’ is opening this Friday, June 12 at The Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger | KBH.G. The exhibition marks the artist’s first major presentation in the country and introduces her most expansive film project to date, set within a large-scale immersive installation.



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The exhibition understands perception not as a neutral reception of reality, but as an active, mediating process shaped by language, history, and cultural expectations. Wise introduces figures that evoke angels, supernatural beings, or technological apparitions, yet present themselves as unstable constructs. The curator Samuel Leuenberger notes: “This exhibition is less about defining phenomena than about how they are experienced. Chloe Wise stays with moments where perception and language begin to falter, allowing uncertainty to remain active rather than resolved. The figures that appear function as cultural tools, ways of thinking through encounters with the unknown. In an era of forced clarity, ‘Extrasensory’ insists on ambiguity as a form of resistance.”

At the heart of ‘Extrasensory’ is a multichannel video installation in which moving images unfold across a constellation of large screens, enveloping the viewer in a shifting, cinematic environment. Across these screens, seven archetypes emerge as embodiments of mystical or metaphysical phenomena. The protagonists inhabit exaggerated roles that blur belief systems, cultural archetypes, and ideological projections. The films visually echo the iconography of Wise’s paintings while drawing on the aesthetics of late 20th century film and television, a seductive, uncanny register that underscores the exhibition’s critique of persuasion, fantasy, and mass imagery.

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The exhibition is curated by Samuel Leuenberger.

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Filmshots ‘EXTRASENSORY’
Chloe Wise, Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger | KBH.G, 2026 - Photo: ©️ Logan White

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AlmineRech

Happy birthday to Jess Valice ()! In celebration, we’re looking back at her recent presentation at her gallery exhibitions ‘Home is Not a Place’ in 2025 at Almine Rech Paris and ‘Mara’ in 2024 at Almine Rech New York! We also look at her most recent solo presentation at Saint Laurent Rive Droite Los Angeles and curated by Anthony Vaccarello, which closed last month.

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“Home has never felt like a fixed place,” Valice confesses. “I’ve always carried a sense of displacement with me.”

‘Driven by her lifelong fascination with psychology and neuroscience, she passionately explores the multifaceted nature of home, bringing us into her deeply personal doubts and existential inquiries. Recalling Rilke’s concept of “world-innerspace” or “the house that stands inside me” transcends physicality, representing a sense of belonging rooted in culture, religion, or personal experience.’

— Lisa Boudet, writer and curator
(‘Home is Not a Place’ Almine Rech Paris 2025!)

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Jess Valice is a Los Angeles-based figurative painter recognized for her melancholic, big-eared, doe-eyed figures. Focussing on the human condition, Valice’s oil paintings and charcoal or oil stick drawings explore the parables of the animalistic gaze. Her figurative works combine within one framework the romantic and the forlorn, the recognizable and mysterious, the religious and irreverent, and the extreme subjectivity of content with sternly objective forms. The artist’s interest stems from her childhood negligence of religious involvement, yet instant attraction to the liturgical artwork adorned in places of worship. Valice’s figures share similar features to the face and body of the artist with seemingly uncomfortable or exhausted bearings in sometimes congenial environments.

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1.Portrait, 2023 / ©️ Jess Valice - Courtesy of the Artist and Almine Rech - Photo: Dan Streit

2.Snippet studio visit video

3-5. ’Home is Not a Place’, Almine Rech Paris, Turenne, 2025

6-8.’Mara’ , Almine Rech New York, 2024

9-10.Solo exhibition Saint Laurent Rive Droite, Los Angeles, CA, US, 2026
Photos: Matthew Kroening

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