Almost Tender immerses us in an ambiguous atmosphere populated by characters of unsettling familiarity and a web of references that Grégory Sugnaux treats on equal terms, blending genres with disarming freedom. In his paintings, the allusion to the grotesque—in its original sense of hybridisation and metamorphosis, a motif recurring throughout his work—is suggested here through half-human, half-animal figures, serial androids, and deformed or even monstrous bodies. A soundtrack composed for the exhibition inhabits the space like a kind of pulsation, spreading from the basement to the upper floors and sustaining the sense of strangeness emanating from the works.
   The artist treats his subjects with a kind of offbeat humour, tinged with an irony that questions their apparent simplicity. In this self-deprecating approach to his own position as a painter, he reveals an assumed vulnerability. He transforms these images into pictorial material, imbuing the surfaces with a sometimes smooth, sometimes vibrant appearance that disrupts their readability. From one canvas to the next, he weaves a fragile balance between fascination and self-criticism, between light and dark.