Introduction

Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art (Tephra ICA) presents a solo-exhibition by Northern Virginia-based, French-American artist Marie B. Gauthiez, curated by Chenoa Baker, Tephra ICA’s 2024 Art Table Curatorial Fellow.

Tephra ICA at Signature, located at the Signature apartment building (11850 Freedom Dr, Reston, VA) is an innovative satellite gallery space that presents a year-round schedule of exhibitions featuring work by local and regional artists as selected by Tephra ICA curatorial staff. Visitors are welcome Wednesday–Saturday, 11am–5pm. Free and open to the public.

Tephra ICA at Signature is provided in partnership with BXP and Bozzuto, and generously sponsored by Reston Community Center.

Marie B. Gauthiez - Exhibitions - Tephra ICA

Persimmon Street, 2024

Gauthiez uses the house as a metaphor for the subconscious. The surfaces of her relief paintings are inspired by walls that show evolution, wear, and tear. Each wall is a chapter of a story with surfaces marking distinctive moments in time. Her mixed media drawings, grid paintings, brick-sized wall fragments, and an immersive plaster wall installation demonstrate the possibility of the medium escaping their containers and pushing against contained surfaces or fixed boarders. These elements, while transient and somewhat elusive, are held together by color, shape, form, and texture. Her work honors what came before and shares new layers.

Exhibition Checklist

Palimpsest A, 2024

"The "house" is predominant in the way I think about my childhood. My years as an immigrant and grief have reinforced the immaterial ties with the places I inhabited in France. I search for identity and clarity through decay and reconstruction while trying to visually synthesize non-verbal memories of interiors. I question the passage of time, what we leave behind, what we carry. Our daydreaming at home as children is an important part of our psyches and I hope people can reflect on that through my paintings. Activating the memories again means that new pathways are created in the brain, a DIY strategy against memory loss. The wall-based installation in the exhibition invites the viewer to come closer - to peek even - to elicit a sense of discovery and recovery. My wish is that the work triggers associations and connections to the viewer's own sense of place."

- Marie B. Gauthiez

Biography

Marie B. Gauthiez (she/her) is a multi-disciplinary French-American artist who makes work about mapping of the self, reconstruction, preservation, and identity. Marie received her MFA in Studio Art from American University in 2024. She is a faculty member at the Washington Studio School in Washington, DC. Recently, Marie co-curated an MFA invitational exhibition called Holding Hands, Holding Space at the Katzen Center (Washington, DC). Marie participated in Art Night “Homegrown” at the National Gallery of Art in 2023. She was awarded the Interlude Residency Support Grant, the Van Swearingen Merit Award, the Catharina Baart Biddle Award, and the Carol Bird Ravenal Art Travel Award. Marie will head to Illinois in December 2025 for a residency at Ragdale.

Marie has exhibited in group shows at Stable Arts (DC), Soft Times Gallery (San Francisco), Studio Gallery (Washington, DC), Brentwood Arts Exchange (MD), the Anacostia Arts Center (DC), the Katzen Museum (DC), Blue Mountain Gallery (NYC), Pyramid Atlantic (MD), First Street Gallery (NYC), and River Arts (SD). She exhibited at the Umbrella Art Fair (DC) last November as part of the Kinetic program of Hamiltonian Artists. Marie holds a BA in applied languages from the Université de Paris 10-Nanterre and an MA in Fashion Business from ESMOD Paris. She lives with her husband and two children in Northern Virginia. 