Women Working in the Arts: Galerie Emmanuelle Grelier
Galerie Emmanuelle Grelier is a New York gallery representing artists from around the world. The gallery is committed to championing artists who use materials in unconventional ways that push beyond the boundaries of a single medium, often through laborious, meticulous processes that demand significant time, patience, and technical skill. At the heart of this work is a celebration of human ingenuity told through the story of a hand, a method, or a material synthesizing to produce unique work that carries the evidence of its own making.
From detailed paintings, to paper and photo installations, textile works, and life-size bronze sculpture, Galerie Emmanuelle Grelier consistently highlights multidisciplinary and innovative artists who bring a distinct perspective to the New York art world.
Emmanuelle Grelier founded the gallery in 2017 to create and foster an environment that is accessible while highlighting complex and meaningful work. Since then, the gallery has grown to represent artists from across the globe and exhibit internationally, from São Paulo, to Mexico City, Miami, and New York.
"I look for a sense of humanity and excellence in the artists I am drawn to; I look for a story and a technique that I could imagine as part of a home — where people are first and foremost interested in art that inspires them and creates an overall sense of well-being," Grelier explains.
To mark the inauguration of Galerie Emmanuelle Gerlier’s new Chelsea space at 555 West 25th Street, the gallery will be presenting What Holds Us, a duo exhibition featuring works by Beatriz Guzman Catena and Laurence Perratzi that opens October 15th. Bringing painting and sculpture into dialogue, What Holds Us considers the structures - emotional, relational, and physical - that support and shape our lives. Across Catena’s dreamlike architectural paintings and Perratzi’s figurative sculptures, the exhibition examines womanhood, memory, care, and the spaces and relationships that hold us through periods of growth and transition.
In advance of the show, we caught up with Emmanuelle to reflect on this milestone moment.
Beatriz Guzman Catena, Brasil - A onda verde, acrylic on canvas, 162 x 244 cm
You’ve worked with many of your artists for years. What have those long relationships taught you about what it means to support an artist’s career?
Working with many of my artists for as long as I have has allowed us to develop deep connections and relationships built on trust, mutual respect, and a shared commitment to one another’s growth.
As the gallery has evolved, we’ve been able to create new opportunities to exhibit and promote their work and introduce it to wider audiences - here in New York, Miami - just recently at Untitled Houston - while their own development has continued to shape and strengthen the gallery in return and now as a permanent space in Chelsea.
There is something very meaningful about growing together in this way. These relationships aren’t simply about individual exhibitions or moments in an artist’s career; they are partnerships that we have built over many years, with the understanding that we are invested in one another for the long term.
Beatriz Guzman Catena, Bo Bardi's jungle, acrylic on canvas, 51.2 x 63.8 inch, 2026 (below left)
Beatriz Guzman Catena, Eames, acrylic on canvas, 55.1 x 63 inch, 2026 (below right)
You founded the gallery in 2017, and now you’re opening a new space in Chelsea. What does this moment mean to you personally, and how does the new space reflect the gallery now?
I feel ready to take the leap to Chelsea after nearly ten years.
The new space feels like a natural evolution, reflecting the next stage of growth for both our artists and the gallery while establishing a permanent New York presence. Having exhibited in New York for years through fairs and temporary spaces, this feels like the natural next step.
I think it’s important not to stay stagnant, but to continue challenging yourself and seeing how far you can go.
With this new chapter, I hope to continue my mission of championing emerging and established international artists whose work is not yet widely known in the US market.
Laurence Perratzi, Circle of Life, Bronze, 23.5 x 16.5 x 6.5 in, 2024
What are you most excited about with regards to the first exhibition in this space?
I’m excited to celebrate this milestone with the collectors, supporters, and friends who have been part of the gallery’s journey over the years.
I’m also looking forward to introducing the work of Beatriz Guzman Catena and Laurence Perratzi to new audiences in New York. Both artists are based in Paris, and I’m excited to bring their distinct practices into this new context.
They will be here for the opening on October 15th which is also quite meaningful for us.
Laurence Perratzi
Why did you select these two artists and how do you see their work in conversation with each other?
Beatriz Guzman Catena was the first artist I began working with more than ten years ago, so it felt particularly meaningful to include her in the gallery’s first exhibition in Chelsea. I wanted to place her work in dialogue with the sculpture of Laurence Perratzi.
Although they work in different mediums, both artists explore themes of memory, care, and womanhood. Together, their works consider the networks of support, trust, and mutual care that hold us together.
You've mentioned looking for “a sense of humanity and excellence” in the art you present at the gallery. What is it that makes you feel an immediate connection to an artist's work?
I feel an immediate connection to an artwork when I am deeply moved by it, whether through its medium, material, or the message the artist is trying to convey.
I particularly appreciate work that requires technical skill, knowledge, or a labor-intensive process, because it highlights the unique human ability to innovate and create.
In a world that is increasingly streamlined by the digital and artificial, I find the most compelling works are often those that retain a strong sense of the human hand.
Beatriz Guzman Catena, Alvarez II, acrylic on canvas, 70 x 100cm, 2025
More about the exhibiting artists:
In her paintings, Beatriz Guzman Catena investigates the relationship between physical space and the memories it holds. The Paris based Argentinian artist creates crisp architectural environments rendered in surrealist bright colors, that hazy, spectral figures—often memories of her girlhood or the women that shaped her—move through. What emerges is the suggestion that what ultimately holds us is not the room but what the room remembers: the presence of mothers and sisters, the intimacies of girlhood, and the care exchanged between women across a lifetime.Where Catena considers the spaces that contain our memories and connections, French artist
Laurence Perratzi turns to the body itself, exploring intergenerational, maternal, and sororal support through sculpture. She works in bronze alongside more unconventional materials, jesmonite, foam, plants, paper; pairings that depend on one another simply to stand. Creating a material exchange in which the durable and the fragile hold each other up. Her figures enact the same logic. They lean, balance, and connect, combining physical strength with vulnerability and delicacy; women and girls caught in poses of rest and mutual support, mother and child, girl and girl. If Catena's architecture is the formal container for memory, Perratzi's materials are the formal enactment of care itself: bronze needs jesmonite the way her figures need one another , and the way, the exhibition suggests, women hold each other up.