Dorothy Circus Gallery is honoured to present a dual exhibition featuring Masakatsu Sashie and Charles Levalet, two internationally acclaimed artists whose work excavates meaning from the margins of contemporary life.
Returning to Italy, Japanese artist Masakatsu Sashie (b. 1974) unveils Simulacrum, a new series of oil paintings focused on his signature floating spheres, impossibly detailed orbs suspended over barren landscapes. These spheres function as a contemporary vanitas, packed tight with the refuse of consumer culture: plastic bottles nest against circuit boards, brand names blur into an abstract pattern, the discarded materials of daily life compressed into perfect geometric forms. Within this chaos lies an astonishing level of detail as Sashie paints every pieces with the care usually reserved for precious objects.
The spheres glow against desolate horizons like alien artifacts while below them stretch empty parking lots and abandoned infrastructure; the skeletal remains of industrial civilisation. Sashie has stripped away all human presence, leaving only aftermath. His technical precision serves as a mournful mediation on cycles of desire and disposal that have accelerated beyond comprehension.
Simulacrumrepresents an evolution in Sashie’s visual language, one that mirrors shifts in how we experience consumption itself. This new body of work embraces emptiness, allowing the spheres to float in vast, uninterrupted space. The isolation of these spheres amplifies their presence, they become something closer to religious icons, repositories of material culture that now feel strangely distant despite being made from the objects that filled our lives only yesterday.
French artist Charles Leval, a.k.a Levalet (b.1988) offers a different perspective, though one equally concerned with what society leaves behind. Son of the old school of Blek le Rat and Jef Aérosol, Levalet developed his street practice through years of wheat-pasting life-size figures onto Parisian walls and staircases throughout France. Inspired by theatre, cinema and improvisation, Levalet utilises references from live entertainment to create his very own fictional troupe of comedians. He stages his life-size characters by thoroughly researching the spaces in which they will be brought to life, portrayed using ink on paper and inspired by staged photographs in theatre.
Masked as an ordinary guy, Levalet’s character is Ulysses as much as Nobody, if we prefer leaving him without a name. We could call him with our children’s names because that boy who shyly hides his face beneath the hat is what it seeks and what it finds, in itself and others. Popping out like an illusionist introducing the spectator to a charming reality parallel to our own, yet finely entangled with it, the Artist presents alternate versions of himself embarking on comedic adventures. This creates a game of visual dialogue with the urban environment, interacting with architecture and surprising passersby, offering a peek into a surreal other world.
Following the success of his 2022 London exhibition, Levalet returns to Dorothy Circus Gallery with Relics, a new body of work that deepens this exploration. His solitary figures navigate situations that hover between physical comedy and existential weight, clinging to fragile structures or moving aimlessly through absurd landscapes. The materials hold equal significance: saw blades become forests, worn painting palettes form the ground and every object carries its own history, enveloping the figures rather than merely framing them. Their bodies seem pressed against materials that push back. Where Sashie’s spheres exist in perfect painterly suspension, Lévalet’s characters are trapped in the physical world, wrestling with the actual stuff of existence.
Dorothy Circus Gallery Rome is honoured to present this exhibition, which will be on view from 21 November to 15 December, preceded by a private vernissage on Thursday, 20 October.
