collective matter marks the public announcement of a shared workspace, inhabited for the past year by Ash Love, Aurélien Potier, Basile Ghosn, Claude Eigan, Jessy Razafimandimby, Sarah Woodhouse, and Wilder Alison, within sissi club.

This studio exhibition sheds light on this form of cohabitation: a proximity that encourages exchanges and circulation — of materials, resources, stories, concerns, and enthusiasms — between the artists, but also with us, the curators and gallerists. Together, they inhabit a “counter-space”: a site of production literally adjacent to the exhibition space, but also a porous territory shaped by each individual’s rhythms, emotions, and experiences.

collective matter presents, for some, finished works; for others, ongoing processes, new gestures — whether definitive or transitional. It reminds us that an exhibition can be a place of vulnerability, a space of first encounters, where artworks are offered as addresses to others, as generous attentions.

The space is divided by swathes of fabric, evoking both the materials used in the works and the way each artist has structured their studio. A more economical solution than picture rail — more fragile and transparent — that resembles us and responds, as you may have guessed, to the scenographic and symbolic challenges of this exhibition. This gesture also references displays that have left a lasting impression on us: Adrien Vescovi’s installation in Sur Pierres Brûlantes, which brought together the artists from the Ateliers de la Ville de Marseille (Marseille, 2020); Jessy Razafimandimby’s solo show Those Lies in Your Eyes (Paris, 2024) at galerie sans titre; or A rather be A-line (Paris, 2022) at Shmorevaz, curated by Persona Curada, who also curated the previous group show in this very space.

Conceived and organized in an organic, intuitive way, this gathering of seven artists simultaneously tells the story of the gallery and maps a recent history of the Marseille scene — a scene in motion, constantly reinventing itself, and persisting for nearly a decade. Basile co-founded Belsunce Projects before participating in Panthera, both a studio and collective based in Marseille. Aurélien gave one of the very first readings at sissi club, just weeks after it opened. Both were residents at the Ateliers de la Ville de Marseille. Sarah arrived in 2019, during a surge of studio openings and creative energy that gave birth to this project. Jessy and Ash moved to Marseille in the summer of 2024, immediately finding a sense of belonging. Claude and Wilder, having lived in Berlin and New York respectively, found in this city — and in its artistic community — a new place to root themselves.

Sharing a space with artists has led us to shift our ways of working. It’s no longer only about supporting the production or dissemination of art, but about sharing its very own conditions: material, emotional, and temporal. This experience, now made visible, humbly echoes what Stefano Harney and Fred Moten call the undercommons: unstable, “fugitive” spaces, shaped by a collective, non-academic intelligence, outside institutional logics, yet fostering other ways of thinking, making, and living. sissi club is more committed than ever to this perspective. With collective matter, we are thrilled to announce the existence of this new adventure — a constellation of individuals, a community driven by desire and the determination to keep existing.