Hatch Gallery

On view at the gallery Romain Sarrot and Kara Chin presenting Pity Petty, a show conceived as a hybrid between a blue screen saturated domestic interior and devotional architecture. © Pauline Assathiany

“Romain Sarrot’s subtle yet prescient installation ‘Dog, Doggie, Dodger’ similarly centers on animals, that conversely offer an alternative to the internet’s darkness. The installation consists of three bas-reliefs that depict a cropped snippet of an outdoor scene: brightly lit from within, a group of dogs seem to be barking threateningly as they run towards a grapevine. The vine may hint to the legend of Zeuxis and Parrhesias, the foundational Greek myth of art’s mimetic quality. Only fully visible if the visitor pushes a trigger, the bas-reliefs are part of an installation that replicates the mechanism of a church confessional, reinforcing both a ritualistic atmosphere and a sense of staged intimacy. Looking closely, the installation’s mechanisms could also be likened to that of a window. Possibly a nod to the ritualistic breadth of internet culture, the work reminds us that the internet at large, and not just the gooncave, is a liminal space - one in which we can be trapped for way too long. Ultimately, the installation acts as “an escape door” to quote Sarrot, reminding us that the only way out is...out.” - Excerpt of the exhibition text by Line Ajan Image: Romain Sarrot ‘Dog, Doggie, Dodger’, 2026, auto-drying putty, wood and aluminum, 80 x 60 x 3 cm. © Pauline Assathiany. Courtesy of the Artist & Hatch Gallery

Discover how Romain Sarrot’s current installation ‘Dog, Doggie, Dodger’ stages a flickering threshold between ritual and escape. Three glowing bas reliefs reveal a cropped outdoor scene where dogs surge toward a grapevine, echoing the ancient tension between image and reality. Activated like a confessional, the work turns looking into a controlled act of disclosure, where intimacy is staged and access is withheld. Part window, part mechanism, it reflects on the internet as a liminal space we inhabit too long, before quietly insisting on a way out. Exhibition view © Pauline Assathiany

Monday Night Mini Drama Series with Hatch. Kara Chin leans into the absurd pull of internet wormholes, where a single swipe can spiral into endless loops of hyper emotional, AI generated pet soap operas. In ‘You Take One More Step and I’ll Kill You’, she looks at how these micro dramas function like digital traps. Tiny, intense narratives featuring cats, dogs, and parrots locked in betrayal, rage, and melodrama, designed to hook attention in seconds. What starts as playful content quickly reveals a deeper system at work: algorithmic feeds optimizing for compulsion, repetition, and emotional overstimulation. Even without understanding the language, viewers keep watching. Chin treats these clips as symptoms of a larger condition, where AI generation and platform logic merge into strange, addictive storytelling ecosystems that spread far beyond their origin. Currently on view as part of the exhibition ‘Pity Petty’ until May 30. Artwork: Kara Chin, ‘You Take One More Step and I’ll Kill You’, 2026 © Pauline Assathiany. Courtesy of the artist and Kara Chin

Pity Petty is now open! Thank you to everyone who joined us this week for the opening and for their support of Kara Chin and Romain Sarrot. The show is on view until May 30. Pity Petty draws on the subculture of gooning, an image-saturated, ritual-driven online phenomenon. Rather than depicting it directly, the artists approach the gooncave as a liminal space between digital and physical, solitary and communal. Bathed in blue light, the exhibition unfolds through ceramic sculptures and bas-reliefs, forming a fragmentary language of symbols and atmospheres. Exhibition view © Pauline Assathiany

Tomorrow is the opening of Pity Petty, a duo exhibition by Kara Chin and Romain Sarrot at Hatch Gallery. Join us from 6 to 9 pm. On view from April 22 to May 30, the exhibition looks at how contemporary internet systems produce looping states of attention and desire, where users are drawn into increasingly repetitive forms of engagement and affect. A key reference is “gooning,” understood here as a prolonged mode of screen immersion built on repetition, escalation, and sustained stimulation, where attention becomes both absorbed and immobilized. Framed within the exhibition as a structural condition rather than a subculture, it points to how digital environments can organize perception through rhythm, fixation, and return. Kara Chin, The Goone State, 2026 © Pauline Assathiany. Courtesy of the Artist and Hatch Gallery.

Hatch Gallery is pleased to present ‘Pity Petty’, a duo exhibition by Kara Chin and Romain Sarrot, opening on April 21, from 6 to 9 pm, and on view until May 30, 2026. @karachin @romainsarrot The exhibition explores how contemporary internet architectures shape behavior, desire, and identity through feedback loops, affective aesthetics, and hyper-mediated environments. More information to follow. 🐈

Currently on view at the gallery is the video piece Instrucción by Felipe Romero Beltrán. Conceived as a strenuous yet graceful experience, the work investigates how the body contends with displacement and transgression. Developed through a collaborative choreography with dancer Lucía You and migrant Bilal Siasse, alongside three additional dancers, the piece draws on three years of research into the migration and integration experiences of young men who crossed the Spanish border by boat. @luciahelenayou Structured in three chapters, Cargas (Charges), Suelos (Floors), and Elevaciones (Elevations), the video documents the exchanges, conversations, and creative process of its participants, celebrating improvisation, collective reinvention, and new rituals of presence and resistance. Instrucción positions the body as a living archive, exploring movement, identity, and transformation. The work engages with two central themes: translating the border-crossing experience into choreographic language, and recording the dynamics of (in)communication between European dancers, distanced from these experiences, and migrants navigating marginalization. Through this dialogue, the project challenges dominant narratives and fosters new forms of solidarity and survival. © Felipe Romero Beltrán

Currently on view at the gallery: Egyptian painter Nada Elkalaawy, featured in 1,2 Glissade et changement. Her works, including An Arrangement (2025) and Breathe (In the Air) (2026), investigate memory, transformation, and the traces we leave behind. Through layered gestures, reworked surfaces, and subtle interplay of light, shadow, and reflection, these paintings hover between presence and absence, creating intimate spaces where past and present, the seen and the imagined, converge. Drawing from personal archives, family photographs, and collected imagery, Elkalaawy transforms everyday objects and images into symbols of memory, regeneration, and quiet narrative. Each surface carries traces of prior gestures, inviting viewers into a contemplative encounter with layers of time, emotion, and unseen details. Credit: 1-2. Nada Elkalaawy, An Arrangement, 2025, Oil on canvas, 50.5 x 35.5 cm © Workplace, UK. Courtesy of the Artist and Gypsum. 3. © Pauline Assathiany 4. Nada Elkalaawy, Breathe (In the Air), 2025, Oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm. © Pauline Assathiany. Courtesy of the artist and Hatch Gallery

It’s the final week of ‘1, 2, Glissade et Changement’ at the gallery’s permanent space, 40 rue Mazarine. Don’t miss this inaugural exhibition featuring Maria Appleton, Kara Chin, Ayla Tavares, Felipe Romero Beltrán, Laila Tara H, Abul Hisham, Nada Elkalaawy, and Romain Sarrot. Through painting, sculpture, textile, ceramics, and video, the artists transform inherited frameworks into movement, memory, and narrative. The exhibition, conceived as a choreographed score, invites you to witness how instruction becomes language, and how motion becomes reflection. © Pauline Assathiany

Currently on view at the gallery is ‘The Unsolved’ by Abul Hisham. In this work, Hisham explores the tension between visibility and concealment. Textured surfaces absorb and diffuse light, letting forms emerge and recede, never fully resolved. Drawing on premodern South Asian and Persian painting traditions, the piece balances fragmentation and material presence, creating a space where meaning is suspended and interpretation remains open. Hisham navigates history, spirituality, and social structures through a materially driven practice. Here, acrylic and casting powder transform linen into a contemplative field where memory, power, and impermanence converge. Abul Hisham K.H (b. 1987, India) is a contemporary artist working across painting and installation. He studied in Thrissur and Hyderabad before undertaking the Rijksakademie residency in Amsterdam (2021–23). His work has been exhibited internationally, including presentations in London, Dubai, New Delhi, and Amsterdam, and he is a participating artist in the 2025–26 Kochi-Muziris Biennale. © Pauline Assathiany

A year ago, we met in Laila’s studio. We started a conversation about her work that transformed into an exchange shaped by distance, the toll of the worst news, and the reframing of our own agency. That day, we spoke about Iran, our sensory experiences, our unspoken memories, and the way they shape us both — one in her art and the other in her writing. Those conversations continued long after the visit itself. What followed is an ongoing correspondence: fragments of thought, recordings, attempts to articulate what resists immediate formulation. When we were invited to produce a portfolio for the magazine Geste/s, it was evident that it would emerge from that very process, where gesture, memory, and language intersect and require constant translation from practice to thought and back. Since then, this exchange has taken other forms, and now extends into an exhibition we are preparing for June at @hatch_paris . Geste/s, March issue Grateful to @yaminabenai & @gestesmagazine