On Tuesday 10 November 2026, the vernissage of Timothy Archer’s Ichors hybrides filled the rooms of Galerie Claire Corcia, rue Saint-Martin, with large canvases, framed works on paper and a painted hide hanging on the wall. Faces with many eyes, birds, snakes and masks crowd the pictures. Between two groups of visitors, Archer spoke with us for about ten minutes. What follows is an edited version of the interview, lightly cleaned for clarity.
Text and interview: Kasra Aliha. Photographs: Behnood Massoumi.
Stories brought home by sailors
Where do your creatures come from?
I was born in 1982, long before the internet. So I had books, and my father and my grandfather were sailors. They were from Brittany, a traditional culture, and sailors are not rich people. What they have to exchange is history and stories. They travelled all around the world, Asia, Indonesia, Africa, and they came back with souvenirs and stories.
This is where I started to draw those hybrids, with my childhood imagination, mixing those memories as a kid. I grew up with strangeness, and I went on making strangeness appear. Later, at art school, it was a fight, because people could not understand what I was trying to do.
Fright and wonder
Art grows from childhood. After twenty-five years of painting, that is the only answer I have. Everything starts there: there are frightening moments, happy moments, and creatures in your mind. They start to build at that time, they grow up in your little head, and they grow up with you.
Why hybrids, today?
It is a topic of our time. We are starting to talk about hybridisation, about creatures that maybe we will grow in a lab tomorrow. I think this exhibition speaks about exactly that. But first we have to search for this hybridity inside ourselves and accept it. Then we accept the living things around us, the other people. And maybe one day we create new hybrids.
As an adult I apply storytelling to myself. I have the story of my childhood, and I have to recompose it, to make it mine.
From the big gesture to intimacy
How has your work changed since you started?
There are many answers. For the first ten years I was trying to express my body through the art. This is why we have these big pieces, even three-metre paintings. When you are younger you need to express bigger things, and the way to search for it was physical.
As I grew up, I have a different question: intimacy. I am in my forties now, and I ask myself what is happening inside. So the work is changing. I work with inks, with pastel, things I have to touch more, and I have to involve my body differently, because I am getting old, and my art too. I am changing with my art, with my age, and with the time. It is an organic process, really.
Old technique, new materials
The paper works are made with oil, charcoal, pigments and pastel on paper, glued onto canvas. In France we call that marouflage. It was used long ago to preserve old paintings on paper, and I like to use those old techniques with new ones, and mix them. The paper has a surface you can touch, and it carries the idea of the canvas.
Hybridity is not only the concept, it is the material too. My works look like modern, traditional painting, but they are not at all: there is spray paint, and there are pure pigments made in Roussillon, in the south of France, which I bring from there. I like to mix the stories. It is like cooking, it is like doing magic. You have to take the symbols and make them yours, and when they are yours, you can play with them.
A gallery like family
You have worked with this gallery for a long time. How do you keep such a close relationship?
This is really special. Claire Corcia was introduced to me when my former gallery came to an end, by my former gallerist, who said she would introduce me to a mother. And she is a mother to me. I am sometimes a brother to her, and I try to be a family with my galleries. I know that is not what people usually do in their lives, but it is the choice I made. If a gallery is small, I go big with them. She knew from the beginning that she could trust me, and I can trust her. We are friends, just family. That is love, and love makes beautiful art.
He adds that this stability matters to him as a painter: he does not have to compete, only to create, to be happy and to make a beautiful world. On how he wants to be seen, he says he wants to be recognised as a painter first, and he has chosen to build his place in Paris quietly, with galleries that trust him.
For the viewer
Is there something you want to say to your audience, or should they discover it themselves?
I would like them to look at what is strange inside them. Maybe this is the most beautiful thing ever. Maybe one day the answer is there, in your darkness, in your shadow. Maybe there is a jewel somewhere, a treasure. It was for me.
About the artist
Timothy Archer was born in 1982 in a family of Breton sailors and has painted for about twenty-five years. His exhibition Ichors hybrides continues at Galerie Claire Corcia until 19 December 2026.
Practical information
Exhibition: Timothy Archer, Ichors hybrides, 10 November to 19 December 2026.
Opening: Tuesday 10 November 2026, 6 pm to 9 pm.
Venue: Galerie Claire Corcia, 323 rue Saint-Martin, 75003 Paris.
Our thanks to Claire Corcia, the gallerist, and to Cyrille, the artist’s husband, for their warm welcome on opening night.
Text and interview: Kasra Aliha. Photographs: Behnood Massoumi.