Emilie Louise Gossiaux

The gallery is pleased to present Dogs Who Run In Dreams, a solo exhibition of work by New York-based artist Emilie Louise Gossiaux. As a multidisciplinary artist who is also blind, Gossiaux translates her inner worlds into the physical realm through works based on dreams, memories, and her sense of touch— an exploration of interdependence, Disability, and the interspecies kinship that centers the decade long relationship with her Guide Dog and animal companion, London.

There is a drawing here of Emilie in Louisiana floating down the Mississippi, where two Alligatorgirls and water moccasins with long femme eyelashes swim towards her, beckoning for her to join them. The Sun and the Moon get in each other’s way, a joining of worlds as she rests. On the shore, Gossiaux’s childhood daybed watches as a car is overturned— it seems the vibrant landscape will soon consume them both. That same bed appears vitrified in ceramic nearby, while a different sculpted bed has London asleep alone with four-posters of ascending white pearlescent orbs. A third bed shows Emilie and London sleeping beside one another, frozen together en repose.

The bed, a place of closeness, sets the stage for the exhibition, just as it sets a stage for a spouse, a mother, a daughter—all roles played by London and Emilie interchangeably throughout their years together. For many, a passageway takes the shape of a bed— while the Moon stands watch, the Sun waits to greet you anew. This place, where Emilie and London once returned together day after day, has become the site for a new kind of intimacy—that of end of life care. In London’s later life, responsibilities between bodies have changed; she no longer shares the night in the queen-sized bed but rests on a floor-bound cushion throughout the day, attended to by her human-companion in her ever-slowing-pace.

With Kong Play, previously shown at Kunsthall Trondheim, Gossiaux envisions an afterlife for London—where desire finds itself at its most exalted—populated not by a thousand virgins, but rather by hundreds of peanut butter filled rubber kongs. With obsession, London chews, chews, chews, licking with incessant vigor, always craving more whilst inhabiting this pleasure palace. Toys durable and subject to play are now rendered earthen and breakable—at once a fragile facsimile and an unshakable monument.

In her notes regarding the exhibition, Gossiaux imagines death as a “second future”. If neither space nor species can dictate the limits of one’s body, then what is death but another river upon which crossings must occur? Infiltration across realms is nothing new; dreams infiltrate the waking hours and vice-versa. Centers of gravity shift— a kind ghost brushes hair in the morning, and smooths blankets around bodily forms before rest. The caterpillar tucks itself into a cocoon. Traversing technicolor forests, London approaches the crossing and sends a message back.

Emilie Louise Gossiaux (b. 1989, New Orleans, LA; lives and works in New York, NY) has presented solo exhibitions at Castle, Los Angeles; Kunsthall Trondheim, Trondheim, Norway; Wave Hill House, the Bronx; Queens Museum, Queens; Mother Gallery, New York; and False Flag Gallery, Queens. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Busan MOCA, Busan, South Korea; Kunstverein Hannover, Hannover, Germany; MoCa Cleveland, Cleveland; The John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan; Wellcome Collection, London, UK; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield; MoMA PS1, Queens; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany; The Krannert Art Museum, Champagne; The Shed, New York; SculptureCenter, Queens; and Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, amongst others. In 2024, Gossiaux was the recipient of both the Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship and the Ida Applebroog Grant.