Sophie Calle’s series Catalogue Raisonné of the Unfinished is featured in her current exhibition at Fraenkel Gallery, on view through April 12, 2025. The series collects photographs, handwritten notes, comic books, and other relics, each paired with a short text describing the artwork Calle had originally imagined and how it came to (not) be. Together, the series reveals glimpses of Calle’s process and thinking, and celebrates the transformation of many dead ends into a final positive form.
A willingness to be directed by chance encounters has long been a component in Calle’s work. In Yes (Infernal), Calle contemplates accepting every invitation she receives for a period of time.
Incorporating a portrait of the artist posing with the Mona Lisa freed from its frame, Calle-Joconde (Wrong turn) finds Calle searching for a personal connection to the painting. Seeing a note on the back of a stretcher that reads “cale joconde” (“Mona Lisa wedge”), Calle asks, “Was it a sign?” But she decides the approximation of her name is not a path to follow.
“I received an extraordinary invitation: ‘Dear Sophie, to see the Mona Lisa, come at 3 pm on the 16th if you’re free….’”
In La Ley de la Calle (What’s the point?) Calle inserts herself into the racy covers of a Mexican comic book with her name in the title—“Calle” translates to “street” in Spanish. Despite the vivid images, she decides her connection to publication was limited.
In a multiyear project, Calle photographed herself with a friend and the Berque twins, a pair of accomplished sailors and surfers. Dressed in matching clothes, the foursome pose in beachy scenes as if enacting an annual vacation, blurring the distinction between performance and real life. But the project is cut short.
“It was an enduring ritual, in search of some sort of culmination. But then Max died. Game over.”
Calle has often invited other people to participate in directing her work, such as asking a fortune teller to help plan her itinerary for Où et Quand? In And now what to do (Not exhilarating), Calle asked her audience for ideas, telling visitors to her exhibitions, “If you have an idea to give me, a path to suggest, advice to offer, let’s talk about it.” A vitrine holds a stack of proposals, while photographs show Calle meeting with visitors.
Absence has held a strong presence in Calle’s work. Elsewhere in the Fraenkel Gallery exhibition, she photographs paintings hidden by coverings, and contemplates the loss of her parents. In The sound of silence (Suspended), Calle is drawn to the stillness and quiet during the moment in 1995 when the verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial was announced. For a few minutes, as she notes, “Long-distance telephone calls dropped by 58%, trading volume on the New York Stock Exchange fell by 41%, water consumption dropped dramatically.”
“I had wanted to hear the sound of silence. Failure.”
In First love (Too late), Calle presents a wooden door on which she installed a plaque recalling a breakup from her youth. On the door itself, which Calle retrieved years later, her lover had written a brief note—still legible—telling her he had chosen another woman.
