GENIEVE FIGGIS: DRAMA CLUB

Royal Couple, 2025

Almine Rech Monaco is pleased to present 'Drama Club,' Genieve Figgis’ ninth solo exhibition with the gallery.

April 14 to September 25, 2026.

Theatricality lies at the heart of Genieve Figgis’ practice. Often pushed to frothy extremes, her paintings reimagine art history with sharp wit and a lush command of color and texture. 

The artist has a longstanding fascination with the eighteenth century—the age of absolutism holds both aesthetic and thematic allure for Figgis, who notes: “I like the costumes, the history and the paintings that were made in this period because they are theatrical. I use painting as a way of exploring different periods of history.”  

Dining room, 2026

Encountering these paintings, one is first struck by the ornament of these worlds and the people who inhabit them, what Henry James described as the “panelled rooms, of precious mahogany, of portraits of women dead, of coloured china glimmering through glass doors and delicate silver reflected on bared tables.”

In Figgis’ world, contradictions abound. Beneath the glamorous lies the ghastly, beneath self-serious artifice, irony. Her paintings are intentionally and delightfully off-kilter, populated by shifting figures, one moment hauntingly beautiful, the next terrifying. And just when we begin to lose our footing, the artist draws us back in, guiding us through her strange and splendid realm.