Ternura / Fuerza

May 17 – September 7, 2025
Galerie Sardine at the Académie Conti
By Invitation of Le Consortium, Dijon

(Dijon, France) – Galerie Sardine is thrilled to present Ternura / Fuerza (Tenderness / Force), an exhibition at Académie Conti, in the legendary vineyard Romanée Conti by invitation of Le Consortium Museum, Dijon.

The exhibition centers around the work of four artists: Jane Corrigan, Ana Benaroya, Alice Mackler & Sylvie Auvray.

Their work exists in an interplay of polarities, navigating the persistent tug between tenderness and force. Using diverse formal and conceptual strategies, these artists tackle aspects of their identities with both playfulness and bravado. Their work pushes forward with a kind of brute, in-your-face gesture that reads expressively over-the-top—at times fierce, at times naive, even funny—while maintaining a raw, unruly kind of violence, an untamable force.

The exhibition invites viewers to examine this terrain of contradictions. Traditional notions of beauty are both embraced and subverted as these artists excavate personal histories and cultural contexts through their distinctive visual vocabularies. Their works refuse to be domesticated or contained, instead pulsating with a vitality that refuses easy assimilation. They exist in a field of their own, an open space that is reverberating with life, and a profound sense of play.

Ana Benaroya (b. 1986, New York, USA) lives and works in Jersey City, NJ.

Benaroya’s universe portrays a female utopia, a kind of lesbian paradise. Ana grew up drawing obsessively, inspired by the vernacular language of American comics, a medium that centers almost exclusively masculine heroes and their superpowers, with secondary, hyper-sexualized female characters that mainly exist as objects of desire.

In Benaroya’s paintings, both the power and the gaze belong to her female heroines. They exist unapologetically in love, exuberantly in possession of their bodies, their sexuality, and their superhuman force. Ana subverts concepts traditionally posed as opposites; her women exist fully in contradiction, performing for no one other than themselves.

Benaroya’s strident use of color further challenges our understanding of traditional notions of beauty and harmony. She embraces intensity and contrast to reflect the dynamism and vigor of her subjects.

Recent exhibitions include: On Holy Ground, Venus Over Manhattan, Art Basel Hong Kong, Wan Chai, Hong Kong (2024); The Way I See It: Selections from the KAWS Collection, The Drawing Center (2024); Carl Kostyál, Stockholm and London (2023); Retinal Hysteria, Curated by Robert Storr, Venus Over Manhattan (2023); In My Room: Ana Benaroya, Tom of Finland, Karl Wirsum, Venus Over Manhattan (2023); Ana Benaroya: Swept Away, Venus Over Manhattan (2022).