Night Gallery is thrilled to present Moonlight Shadow, an exhibition of new paintings by Claire Tabouret. This marks the artist’s third solo show with the gallery, following Eclipse (2017) and The Pull of the Sun (2020). The exhibition coincides with the announcement that Tabouret has been commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron and Paris Archbishop Laurent Ulrich to design six new stained glass windows for the iconic Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Tabouret will collaborate with Atelier Simon-Marq on this historic project, which is slated for completion and installation by late 2026.

Tabouret revisits an old motif, the group portrait, in Moonlight Shadow (2025), the exhibition’s eponymous, large-scale work. She sprays the painting, derived from an historical image of costumed children, with grey-blue liquid paint. The technique further suggests the instability and accretion of memory. Tabouret views this final layer as a blanket both protective and evocative of ash, simultaneously signaling safety and erasure in response to the wildfires sweeping through Los Angeles.

Sleep and its absence inspire Claire Tabouret’s newest body of work. The exhibition title is drawn from Mike Oldfield’s 1983 song Moonlight Shadow, in which the musician sings: “The trees that whisper in the evening / Carried away by a moonlight shadow / Sing the song of sorrow and grieving / Carried away by a moonlight shadow.” With a similar sense of repetition and theme, Tabouret also reflects on loss, nocturnal mysteries, and the progression of time.

Tabouret continues to draw inspiration from art history. She looks to paintings by Mary Cassatt and Finnish artist Helene Schjerfbeck to inform her own depictions of herself and the others in this liminal space. The Sleep (2025) features Tabouret’s daughter peacefully asleep in bed under her mother’s loving gaze. Self-Portrait on the Couch at Night (2025), in contrast, depicts the artist sleepless and sprawled atop a blue couch, anxious and hyper-vigilant. In these compositions, dreams and fears coalesce, as in the hallucinatory worlds of Edvard Munch and Léon Spilliaert.

In an almost life-size painting, titled In the Studio (2025), Tabouret portrays herself holding a sleeping child, as if stepping out of her own Moonlight Shadow painting and onto the studio floor. The artist expertly intertwines creation and care. Within the dreamlike realm of the painting, the boundaries between artist and subject, mother and child, life and art dissolve.

Drawing from personal and found photographs, Tabouret creates wistful compositions through her signature layering of paint. Some works are marked by drips and thinned-out washes. Day-glo underpaintings and timeworn finishes imbue the paintings with both contemporary energy and a sense of nostalgia. These elements find a complement in Tabouret’s new palette, which privileges blues, purples, and earth tones. Self-portraits are a recurring theme throughout the show, playing on subtle changes. As Tabouret explains, “I’m burying and uncovering.”

Claire Tabouret (b. 1981, Pertuis, France) has recently had solo exhibitions at Château La Coste, Le Puy-Sainte-Reparade, France; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; Palazzo Cavanis, a collateral event of the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy; Musée Picasso, Paris, France; Musée des BeauxArts, Rouen, France; HAB Galerie, Nantes, France; Almine Rech Gallery, Paris, France and London, United Kingdom; Perrotin Gallery, Paris, France, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, Japan; Collection Lambert, Avignon, France; Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; The YUZ Museum, Shanghai, China; as well as a two-person exhibition with Yoko Ono at Villa Medici, Rome, Italy; and a two-person exhibition with Lee Miller at Palais Idéal du Facteur Cheval, Hauterives, France. Recent group exhibitions include the Holy See Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy; Museo Picasso Málaga, Málaga, Spain; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX; Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, Miami, FL; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Bourse de Commerce, Paris, France; amongst others. Her work has been acquired by major collections and is notably part of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Orange County Museum of Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, Perez Art Museum Miami, Dallas Museum of Art, Columbus Museum of Art, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Pinault Collection, Centre George Pompidou, Voorlinden Museum, and the YUZ Museum, among others. She lives and works in Los Angeles.