We grow up governed by rules that shape our behaviors and persona, attuning us to societal standards and expectations. These directives, presented as undeniable truths, are rarely questioned for their inherent arbitrariness. The toys and objects we engage with as children, along with narratives absorbed through media, serve as instruments of reinforcement, simulating social scenarios and training us in the ‘correct’ ways to interact with the world.
For her latest exhibition at Hauser & Wirth, French sculptor Camille Henrot has constructed an entire playground to expose these dynamics. As the title suggests, “A Number of Things ” stages a disparate ensemble of objects that highlight the paradoxical nature of society’s systems of signs—structures that simultaneously define and constrain our imagination, limiting a more playful and exploratory engagement with our surroundings.
The exhibition’s floor, with its color and material, is reminiscent of a gym or children’s playground, while a network of lines carves the space into a regimented grid that feels capable of extending infinitely, much like the abstract vastness of virtual landscapes. “The grid is both there to communicate that it’s a space of possibilities, things that can be transformed into a space of Utopia and projection, but also this contains and restricts,” Henrot told Observer after the opening.
Known for her archetypal and highly evocative sculptures, Henrot has reimagined children’s developmental tools and toys, garments and ancient counting devices—distorting them into bizarre, almost otherworldly forms. In the process of conceiving and producing these works, Henrot moves fluidly between extreme intuition and intention, balancing spontaneous expression with mathematical control. “The sculptures are very close to how I draw them spontaneously. I use a very fat pencil so that the line goes fast with the gesture, the same way when I paint; I also use this calligraphy brush with very liquid paint, so I make very fast gestures and keeping the energy of the movement is really important to me,” she said. “Then, in contrast, the process of making the sculpture is instead very slow.” She begins with a small model made by hand. “Then, there’s this step, which is very important, which is to decide what scale the sculpture will be.”
Towering over the space is a large work from her Abacus series, likely one of the largest sculptures Henrot has ever created. Totemic in its presence, it serves as an imposing reminder of society’s fixation on reducing chaos into neatly quantifiable symbols. “I was interested in the abacus as it’s both an abstraction as it represented a number, but also a development toy. But it is a toy that sits away from the reproduction of social models.” Meanwhile, at the entrance, a group of smaller stylized dogs sits unattended, their leashes dangling as if waiting for an absent owner—an arresting metaphor for the ways society domesticates and controls. On the floor, a pair of work gloves appears casually discarded, evoking a studio left open as an invitation to unrestrained creative expression.
All of Henrot’s sculptures possess a certain familiarity, yet there’s something undeniably alien about their twisted, distorted forms—as if they don’t quite belong to this world. They feel like misfits, yet they seem to exist seamlessly within some parallel reality, one that operates on the logic of dreams or hallucinations. “I think that if you want to talk about the unfamiliar, the unknown or the uncanny, you have to start with something people know as familiar,” she said. “In the definition of the uncanny, this characteristic is only perceivable, inside what was familiar. In fact, the scariest movies happen at home. I think starting with the banal and something very familiar would be very helpful.” For this reason, her work is often described as surrealist. While Henrot acknowledges this connection, her approach is anything but subconscious or automatic—her process is highly intentional, her conceptual foundation carefully premeditated in its production.
Yet, it is precisely through their surreal distortions that these sculptures embrace imperfection, allowing them to remain fluidly organic while revealing their graphic origins. Unlike many contemporary artists, Henrot refuses to design digitally, rejecting computer-generated renderings. “I think we can’t think about everything digitally. When the structure is made digitally, a lot of that is invented by the algorithm,” she explained. “I think there’s something that you can’t control from A to Z. Additionally, as a human brain has imagined the computer, forms are always somehow already done; it looks like something already done before.” This approach emerges from a tension between the playful, free-flowing expressivity of the drawn line and the rigid mathematical structures embedded in all of Henrot’s sculptural forms. Even though the exhibition presents itself as a carefully choreographed arrangement of objects and ideas, the artist insists that, like all her work, it has evolved through an intuitive, almost improvisational process over time. “I collect a lot of materials and references that inspire different works. The way I work is actually very intuitive.”
Henrot explores the tension between freedom and control—between individual expression and imposed social order—most directly in her Dos and Don’ts series, displayed along the gallery’s walls. Drawing from etiquette books, these densely layered works, which combine printing, painting and collage, create a trompe l’oeil effect that collapses the mundane into the realm of art. Invoices from an embryology lab, dental X-rays and children’s school homework become evidence of the daily human struggle to impose order on an inherently chaotic world, reducing lived experience into data and numbers. “It’s a way to talk about how our lives are under the law of algorithms. Mathematical models and medical models rule every aspect of our lives,” according to Henrot.
At its core, the series invites viewers to confront the arbitrary nature of the structures that govern daily life. “Etiquette books are the pure reproduction of social models. They are like the to-do list of social models,” Henrot said. “It’s a bit like fashion. It’s something that is completely constructed by men.” The inspiration for these works came from Don’t, a book Henrot discovered at her mother’s home, which lists behavioral “don’ts” for navigating social life. “They’re made to make everyone in the society feel comfortable and feel accepted, but some of them are also reproducing gender, class and racial orders. I was interested in how those tropes shape our daily life and choices.”
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These rules, Henrot points out, are not universal but culturally specific. What constitutes good manners in France, for instance, can be considered impolite in the U.K. “They famously disagree on a number of things, especially manners at the table,” underscoring how etiquette reflects the norms of a particular society rather than any objective standard.
Ultimately, “A Number of Things” lays bare the contradictions we all navigate, existing between imposed structures and individual expression, between the need for control and the impulse toward freedom. Henrot’s work highlights the tension between these forces as we attempt to make sense of our place in the world. Yet, for the artist, art remains a space where new possibilities can be imagined. “I think that our role as artists is to expand the vision to maintain hope through the belief that things don’t have to be the way they are,” she concludes.
“Camille Henrot, A Number of Things” is on view at Hauser & Wirth, New York, through April 12.
