Hélène Fauquet's first institutional solo show in her home country is on at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris, 19 October 2026 to 3 January 2027. Titled Vivresse, a contraction of the French words for life and intoxication, the show is just seven small sculptures on individual plinths in the top-floor gallery.

Each work is built around a silver-plated or pearl-studded frame of the sort found on an executive's desk, but instead of a portrait it holds one or more conches or other shells, fixed in place like oysters cementing themselves to rock. The shells sit on the artist's own photographs of bubbles in viscous, transparent substances such as water, gels and creams. Spotlights heighten a glossy effect between a jeweller's window and a cabinet of curiosities, while the smallest work, Cellulite, a frame inset with pearls and faceted stones, measures about eight by ten centimetres. Other works include Metallic Monk, a large pink conch jutting from its frame, and Opera, of cut seashells and an inkjet print.

It opened on 19 October, two days after mass demonstrations swept France, with more than half a million marching in Paris, the same week Art Basel Paris announced an early close, cancelling its weekend public days. The Kunstkritikk review notes the contrast between the glittering miniature world inside and the streets outside, where shopkeepers boarded up shattered windows and curfews were imposed nearby. It also records that director Clément Delépine said nothing about the unrest at the press preview, a silence the critic found pointed.

The piece reads Fauquet's work through that moment, arguing her play with bling and luxury speaks to a wider Rococo revival, with the art world again a playground for the ultra-rich as the world outside grows more unequal. It also traces Surrealist leanings in the shell works, recalling Dora Maar's 1934 photomontage of a manicured hand reaching from a conch, and the movement's fondness for the ocean depths as a route to the unconscious. Fauquet, the review suggests, does not invent the appetite for bright, shiny baubles; she plays on it, in miniature.