The Harlequin’s Dog brings into dialogue the work of Amy Sillman, Clément Rodzielski, and Étienne-Martin, drawing on the figure of Harlequin as an unstable structure defined by fragmentation, the shifting of roles, and the multiplication of identities.

Across the three artists, each practice unfolds not through linear development but through displacement, assemblage, and reconfiguration. This logic produces forms in which figural identity remains unpredictable, continually interlacing between figuration, abstraction, and theatricality.

The title emerges from a set of cross-references: Étienne-Martin’s sculpture Arlequin ou Novalis, made towards the end of his life, and the marginal, almost indiscernible presence of a dog hidden behind a figure dressed as Harlequin in Pablo Picasso’s Three Musicians (1921). These elements function as indices of a construction of the image in which the relations between centre and periphery, figure and background, color and form, and even animal and…