Corey Helford Gallery (CHG) is proud to announce a solo exhibition from French sculptor Ornélie, titled Midnight bloom. Opening Saturday August 8th, the show will be on view in Gallery 3 through September 12th.

Ornélie explores the delicate relationship between humanity and the natural world, creating an immersive body of work where organic forms become powerful metaphors for transformation, resilience, and survival. The exhibition invites viewers into dreamlike landscapes where beauty is inseparable from vulnerability, and nature becomes both a sanctuary and storyteller.

With Midnight bloom, French sculptor Ornélie presents a haunting new body of work that explores femininity as a continual act of transformation, resilience, and quiet defiance. Flowers, butterflies, and organic forms emerge from the bodies and faces of her female figures—not as decorative embellishments, but as outward manifestations of an inner life shaped by endurance, adaptation, and renewal. Existing somewhere between reality and reverie, her sculptures invite viewers into richly imagined worlds where beauty becomes an instinct for survival rather than an ideal to attain.

Regarding the exhibition, Ornélie explains: "Midnight bloom invites the viewer into a world where the feminine and the organic meet in a quiet tension, like a bloom held within the darkness. Beauty is no longer a given, but a response—a way of holding on. Beauty becomes a survival instinct."

Ornélie's artistic journey began with an early fascination for fairy tales, classic animation, and European comic books. Drawn to worlds where fantasy, history, and mythology intertwined, she developed a visual language rooted in storytelling—one that continues to shape her work today. Influenced by classical painting, animation, and cinema, Ornélie creates narrative sculptures that exist somewhere between reality and dream. Ornélie handcrafts every element of her intricate works in polymer clay, from delicate lace, embroidery, and flowing garments to expressive eyes, insects, flowers, and skeletal details. Each sculpture is individually modeled, fired, sanded, and meticulously hand-painted, transforming weeks of technical craftsmanship into richly layered, emotionally resonant works.

In Midnight bloom, Ornélie presents female figures that appear composed, yet are already beginning to give way. Beneath the surface, something adapts, reorganizes, and survives. What emerges is not chosen, but necessary.