Mariane Ibrahim to Represent Clémence Gbonon

Mariane Ibrahim is pleased to announce the global representation of Clémence Gbonon, a Paris- based artist. Bulbous forms, dripping lines, and vibrant complementary colors register bodily and psychic gestures in her paintings, capturing figures that appear to strain, fragment, and dissolve within the canvas.

 

Gbonon’s compositions operate through a “junkyard” logic in which objects, motifs, and traces of everyday life—sentimental, utilitarian, or discarded—collide in productive tension. These layered constellations reflect the contradictions of desire, privileging intuition, improvisation, and material experimentation.

 

Gbonon will participate in I Dream I Cross the River in One Stride, a group exhibition opening at the gallery’s Chicago space in February 2026 and will debut her first solo exhibition in Paris in 2027. Her work is also currently included in the group exhibition L’esprit de l’atelier at MO.CO Panacée in Montpellier and is a part of the 69th Salon de Montrouge, opening in February 2026.

 

“I am delighted to work with the gallery. To me, that means my ongoing commitment to painting gets to meet Mariane Ibrahim’s visionary approach. My engagement—with color, physicality, and with the inexplicable faith that painting involves—has now found a true support. As a painter, I get to pursue my purpose, and I am very grateful for it. Overall, I am proud to work with Mariane’s amazing team, and to be represented by a gallery which is daring, future-oriented, and human.” – Clémence Gbonon.

 

Drawing from vernacular and self-taught practices, including the work of Bob Thompson and Thornton Dial, Gbonon allows gestures to flow and contract, creating pictorial spaces where the unconscious can emerge.

 

Born in 1994 in France and graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2024, Clémence Gbonon also studied at Cooper Union in New York, following earlier academic training in public international law and political science. Her time in the United States—particularly in Washington, D.C. and New York—has been formative, deepening her engagement with American painting traditions, notably figurative expressionism and its emphasis on color, physicality, and performative gesture.

 

“Clemence’s universe is singularly devoted to express subconscious elements that underline complex realities. What I particularly engage with her paintings beyond its rich and sophisticated palette, it’s the invitation to dare to look at our own self and to be absorbed in a space profoundly human.” – Mariane Ibrahim