Franklin Parrasch Gallery is pleased to present Somewhere Inside the Machine, Claire Colette’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. On view September 10 through October 16th, 2026 the show brings together a new body of paintings that expand upon the artist's investigations of language, nature, and the presence -- or absence -- of the divine. 

The exhibition's title, drawn from the poem “Gnosticism VI,” included in Anne Carson's Decreation, points to one of Colette’s central preoccupations: the body, the earth, and society as interlocking systems: machines within machines, painting as a machine for thinking. Decreation is based on Simone Weil's concept of decreation: the undoing or dissolving of the self as a path toward a truer self, and in turn a truer relationship to the world. That sense of an internal system extends to a gnostic framework Colette has long been drawn to — the idea of a "divine spark" housed within matter, and of the painting itself as an access point.

Colette builds her surfaces from the ground up, mixing resin with dried flowers, ash, salt, and acrylic — a practice that began when she found herself contemplating ritual, magical thinking, and what makes an object resonant. Her process is inseparable from these ideas, invoking a perceptual exploration of universal and natural phenomena. Colette’s meticulously rendered, reductive compositions function as portals or thresholds between the felt world and something more elusive: states of expanded consciousness, deep time, and cosmic order.  

Claire Colette (b. 1980, Reims, France), received her MFA from Mills College, Oakland, CA (2013), and her BFA from the Art Institute of California – Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA (2003). Select solo and two-person exhibitions include: Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2025), Micki Meng, San Francisco, CA (2023); Asia Art Center, Taipei, Taiwan (2022); 12.26, Dallas, TX (2022); Harper’s, New York (2020); and Ochi Projects, Los Angeles, CA (2018); among others. Group exhibitions include: Shrine, Los Angeles, CA (2023); 12.26, Dallas, TX (2023); Philip Martin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2023); Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA (2023); Harper’s, East Hampton, NY (2023); Asia Art Center, Taipei, Taiwan (2021); La Loma Projects, Pasadena, CA (2021); and Make Room, Los Angeles, CA (2021); among others.

Colette was awarded a 2-Year Studio Residency at Southern Exposure, San Francisco, CA (2011) and held a Printmaking Residency at School of Visual Arts, New York, NY (2008). Colette’s work resides in the permanent collection of the de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA, among other institutional collections. She lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Claire Colette is represented by Franklin Parrasch Gallery.