BODY WITHOUT ORGANS
DAVID CZUPRYN, ANTONIA FREISBURGER, WITALIJ FRESE, ALLAN GANDHI
JANUARY 23 - FEBRUARY 28, 2026
GALERIE DROSTE PARIS
72 RUE DES ARCHIVES
75003 PARIS
OPENING RECEPTION:
SATURDAY JANUARY 31, 2026
6 - 9 PM
At the start of 2026, Galerie Droste is presenting the group exhibition Body without Organs, bringing together artists David Czupryn, Antonia Freisburger, Witalij Frese, and Allan Gandhi. The concept of the body without organs is one of the major themes theorized by philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari in France in the 1970s and 1980s. Together, they borrowed from an idea actually developed by poet and theater theorist Antonin Artaud, notably in his book Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu. As the title of this book suggests, it deals profoundly with the question of liberation. The body without organs represents a way of developing tools that help us break free from dominant models and think and desire differently. It is physical pain, for Artaud, that gives rise to this desire for an immortal body, sheltered from illness and death. For Deleuze, desire is neither a lack nor a frustration: as anti-Freudian as possible, desire produces connections between elements; it is a positive factor, emancipatory both individually and collectively.
If we think about the concept of a body without organs without any philosophical approach, but rather by thinking only with images, the concept can lead us to two things: the natural death of an organism deprived of its internal machinery, or, more plastically and poetically, the ever-changing path toward greater freedom of the imagination, an escape toward unrestrained expression and the disappearance of heavy constraints. The four artists in this exhibition all have in common the fact that they treat the body as malleable matter rather than as a defined and fixed object. While corporality remains central to their work, it is not in a biological way, but rather tends toward symbolism, hybridity, emotion, and fluidity. It challenges physicality in order to better address the concept of constant transformation. This hybridity is clearly evident in David Czupryn's paintings, which depict human bodies whose fate never seems immutable. Surrounded by details that speak volumes about the complexity and numerous networks of our journeys, they are perceptible but almost ghostly, allowing the imaginary to prevail over the organic. The same applies to the works of Antonia Freisburger, which focus primarily on places and unconscious spheres that are connected by energies—energies that, without being explicitly described as human, can be understood as interactions between thoughts or states of consciousness in constant flux. Her works resemble brain cells or organs, evoking electrons connected to each other in space, referring both to human networks and the universe, and revealing a dizzying dimension of invisibility. In general, the strange yet familiar forms created by these four artists suggest an infinite dialogue that, through their repeated and independent movements or their apparent fleetingness, begins to resemble a dance.
Once again, to define the concept, we are talking about the corps acte (body in action), and Deleuze and Artaud often refer to choreography. According to the latter, we must “make the human anatomy dance.” This may bring to mind the dancing bodies in Pina Bausch's creations, which, according to Alain Mons, are treated “essentially as apparitions, unexpected and wild surges.” For the choreographer, bodies are seen as translators of the most vivid, buried, beautiful, or painful emotions, so much so that one might think one is watching destinies dance rather than bodies forced to perform an exercise. The use of repetition and carefully studied scenography gives her work an aura that is as sculptural as it is pictorial, encouraging us to consider the body in a different light. In this sense, Witalij Frese's sculptures also respond to the potential for permanent recomposition, fragmented, dancing, and vulnerable. The appearance of certain pieces, with their ancestral and almost votive look, recalls the quest for spirituality and transcendence that Artaud associates with the body without organs. In Allan Gandhi's work, the technique of flat color and the choice of colors, reminiscent of some of the Nabis' work, invite a freedom that ultimately seems inevitable in order to express the truth of a sensation. In his creative process, the painter sometimes uses a specific sewing method to expand his own canvas, his own idea, and his field of possibilities. For these four artists, change is continuous, open, and obvious.
Finally, it would be interesting to draw a comparison with one of the most celebrated British painters of his time, Francis Bacon, whom Deleuze also discussed in his Logic of Sensation. The philosopher is interested in the painter because his portraits and self-portraits seem to depict this body deprived of structures that would allow it to function perfectly. Or perhaps it is because psychological pain and the search for interiority and intensity have gone so far that he has become the artist of the body without organs par excellence. In any case, Czupryn, Freisburger, Frese, and Gandhi all develop this idea of emancipation from a constricting straitjacket. And if there is something that links them, in addition to this liberation, this quest, this dance, it is the great dynamism and disarming instability of these identities that assert themselves elsewhere than in their frozen appearance.
