Simon Martin Exhibition

SIMON MARTIN I SHANGHAI CULTURAL SPACE

A KISS IN THE FOREST

SIMON MARTIN EXHIBITION

NOVEMBER 8, 2025 – JANUARY 18, 2026

ICICLE Cultural Space Shanghai presents A Kiss in the Forest, the first solo exhibition in China by French artist Simon Martin. The exhibition, which assembles works on canvas painted between 2023 and 2025, explores the theme of the embrace.

Each painting captures a trace, a moment, a breath, a glimmer. Martin’s palette is rooted in muted, powdery tones, which diffuse the light rather than reflect it. This chromatic treatment imparts to the whole a subdued, spectral atmosphere, like that of a memory, allowing the remnants of sensation to resurface. His painting unfolds within a space of slowness and silence, favouring evocation over narration, ambiguity over assertion.

"At once near and far, his figures linger on the edge of absence. Diffuse, evanescent, they inhabit the threshold of the visible – between waking and dreaming, appearance and disappearance. In these subdued canvases, behind half-erased figures, there surfaces the premonition that all beauty is threatened with vanishing, that every sensation is destined to fade into the night. From this aesthetic of withdrawal arises a silent and secret sensuality, surrendered to the mist of remembrance, to the unspoken realm of desire." – Myriam Kryger, exhibition curator.

SHANGHAI CULTURAL SPACE

ICCF GARDEN

2, HENGSHAN ROAD – XUHUI DISTRICT, SHANGHAI

SIMON MARTIN

Born in 1992 in Vitry-sur-Seine, Simon Martin lives and works in Paris. Regarded as one of the most talented French painters of his generation, Martin quickly rose to prominence after graduating from the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2017. His work is notably included in the collections of the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris and the Agnès b. Foundation.

Since 2020, he has been represented by Galerie Jousse Entreprise, which has already dedicated four solo exhibitions to him in Paris, including one presented at FIAC (now Art Basel Paris) in 2021.

Simon Martin at the ICICLE Cultural Space in Shanghai

A kiss in the forest, 2024, Oil on canvas, 33 x 41 cm © Simon Martin, ADAGP 2025. Courtesy of Galerie Jousse Entreprise, Paris.

Dance, 2024, Oil on canvas, 65 x 50 cm, © Simon Martin, ADAGP 2025. Courtesy of Galerie Jousse Entreprise, Paris.

Simon Martin at the ICICLE Cultural Space in Shanghai

13 images per second I, 2023, Oil on canvas, 50 x 61 cm, © Simon Martin, ADAGP 2025. Courtesy of Galerie Jousse Entreprise, Paris.

13 images per second II, 2023, Oil on canvas, 50 x 61 cm, © Simon Martin, ADAGP 2025. Courtesy of Galerie Jousse Entreprise, Paris.

13 images per second III, 2023, Oil on canvas, 50 x 61 cm, © Simon Martin, ADAGP 2025. Courtesy of Galerie Jousse Entreprise, Paris.

Daffodils II, 2025, Gouache on canvas, 38 x 46 cm, © Simon Martin, ADAGP 2025. Courtesy of Galerie Jousse Entreprise, Paris.

Insomnia, 2024, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 60 x 120 cm, © Simon Martin, ADAGP 2025. Courtesy of Galerie Jousse Entreprise, Paris.

SHANGHAI CULTURAL SPACE

The ICICLE Space, located in ICCF Garden, aims to foster encounters between artists and cultural practitioners from East and West, in the pursuit of a global community of art and culture.