Inspired by Raina Lee’s recent residency in Paris, Cartes Postales features a new series of ceramic works inspired by the sights, tastes, and rich artistic legacies of the City of Light. The exhibition marks two new directions in the artist’s practice, representing the debut of her first paintings and her first figurative works.

Over the course of a month, Lee walked through the city as a flâneur, observing the nuances of urban Parisian life in the era of late capitalism. She recorded her observations through sketches and watercolors captured in between visits to museums and studios of Paris-based sculptors and painters, from the Giacometti Institute to Monet’s Giverny. Drawing from Jean Arp, Auguste Rodin, Vincent Van Gogh, Leonard Foujita, and Ellsworth Kelly, she noted the pivotal role that time spent in France played in many artist’s lives and trajectories. Cartes Postales is a continuation of her personal dialogue with the rich history of art and artists in Paris and the everyday pleasures of urban life in the storied city.

Cartes Postales showcases forty delicately rendered relief-style ceramic postcards depicting Parisian landscapes, objects, and artworks—from the iconic to the mundane. Each postcard is a complete small-scale painting, with drawings first etched into the clay, then painted with the artist’s signature textured glazes.

The wall mounted series will be accompanied by sculptural objects the artist crafted based on the iconography of her paintings. These sculptural works include a large slab of butter with a removable knife, a Bernard Palissy snake platter, a Sèvres Breast Cup made for Marie Antoinette, and a Giacometti figure. The largest work, Giverny, is a life-size installation based on Monet’s pond, reinterpreted with ceramic water lilies arranged on a mirrored table in the center of the gallery space. The “pond” simulation will reflect a sky scene projected on the ceiling above, the very same reflection Monet so often depicted in his most famous series.