Dancing through Atmosphere
- Natalie Johnson
- Apr 6
- 5 min read
Étienne Calsac Rosé de Craie x Kwamé Azure Gomez
There is a particular kind of experience that begins gently and then quietly builds with intensity not to be ignored. Before you know it, you realize you're somewhere else entirely.
The room has shifted, the air tastes different, and an energy has been conjured. Think back to the juke joint scene in Sinners when the dancing began to shift as Preacherboy’s voice invoked an opening between worlds. It seemed as if the dancers were no longer in full control of their bodies, instead they were under the spell of the music. This is what I would like to believe that Kwamé Azure Gomez calls atmosphere. It is also what winemaker Étienne Calsac has been quietly bottling in Avize, France.
The Wine
The Rosé de Craie, which means rosé from chalk, arrives looking barely there. Its color is a pale copper-pink, almost apologetic about how beautiful it is. Upon first sip, you are engulfed in a soft pink that whispers wild strawberry, a flash of citrus, something floral, minerals and clean notes. You think you understand what it is, but then something shifts.
This pink Champagne tastes like a Blanc de Blancs with a salinity that immediately makes you think of walking across chalky white soil while rose petals are thrown at your feet. The chalk has real purpose though because it provides structure after the haunting whispers of pink have dissipated. It’s like shape shifting in a glass, because the next sip calls your attention to notes of minerals, precision and energy.
This is a feeling that you could chase time and time again because of its playful nature.
Étienne Calsac did not grow up among the vines. His love for Champagne came through his father's bottles and a pair of grandparents in Avize whose three hectares had been quietly rented to the grandes maisons for years. At 26, he reclaimed them, and in doing so, reclaimed a lineage on his own terms. His idea was to not follow the classic Champagne mold, instead he decided to nurture his terroir with the kind of care and attention that I wish all Bubbles were made with. Calsac works with organic methods, native yeasts, minimal dosage, extended lees aging, and the kind of conscientiousness that immediately gets noticed. The Rosé de Craie is a wine that does not announce itself. It builds with intensity, like that juke joint scene in Sinners, and holds you firmly in its grasp until the last drop has been enjoyed.
The Artist
Kwamé Azure Gomez grew up performing. As a child in Akron, Ohio, she traveled to churches across the Midwest with a liturgical dance group. Her body articulated gospel music in physical space with arms outstretched invoking the spirit made visible through movement. When she left for Chicago and an MFA at the School of the Art Institute, she left that world behind.
Or so she thought.
Kwamé Azure Gomez, 2025 Photo by Merik Goma
copyright of Kwamé Azure Gomez and courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen
Slowly, Gomez began to explore the dance rituals of ballroom culture and house music. In the pulse of the club, she found something very familiar: the atmosphere of the club followed the same spiritual and emotional frequency of the churches she knew in her youth. The phrase “go to the club on Saturday and church on Sunday” screams at me right now. There is a reason why that behavior remains a standard and I believe it has something to do with the music that nurtures our soul. The words may be different but the harmonies and bass feed our spirits.
That recognition, that impossible sameness, became the foundation of her painting practice, and the animating principle of Set the Atmosphere, her first solo show at Marianne Boesky Gallery (on view through April 2026).
All by Kwamé Azure Gomez Top Row: (Left) Ask the woman where she goin, or dare to ask her where she been, 2026; (Middle) Send it Out, 2025; (Right) Right Back On, 2026
Bottom Row : (Left) No Weapon (After Dorothy), 2025; (Center) Speak Over Yourself, 2025; (Right) Back water Blue New moon (after Dianne), 2025
copyright of Kwamé Azure Gomez and courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen
Working with oil, acrylic, spray paint, and modeling paste, Gomez spins through canvas intuitively, layering thin washes of color with bold expressionistic gestures and subtle, almost ghostlike suggestions of figures. Whether human forms, limbs, or birds, they make a brief appearance before receding back into vibrant backgrounds. The figures do not announce themselves. They materialize mid-movement, with their heads thrown back and arms raised, and then the layers close over them again. While viewing the show, for a brief second, I tried to mirror the image that I thought I saw on the canvas. The arc of the torso and extension felt so real to me, it was as if I was looking at myself in a mirror. The paintings are built on the same logic as the wine: what you see on first encounter is not all there is.
You must savor the harmony as it dances across your palate and moves across the canvas.
Why These Two
The structure and feeling of these two artists are one and the same. Both Calsac and Gomez are inheritors who made the act of returning to a space that initially felt unfamiliar ultimately become an act of reinvention. Both work in layers and use their medium to hold two worlds simultaneously. In the wine, the chalk and fruit are in conversation; in the paintings, gospel and ballroom are intertwined. This is an expression of the sacred and the ecstatic, presence and the trace of absence.
Top Row: (Left) Etienne Calsac; (Right) Rosé de Craie Label
Bottom Row (Left) - Somebody Calling you (All Goodby ain't gone) , 2026; (Right) Kwamé Azure Gomez -Right back on in, 2026, Photo by Merik Goma
copyright of Kwamé Azure Gomez and courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen
Both artists also believe that the most powerful experiences begin quietly. Set the Atmosphere takes its title from a Kurt Carr gospel song, which is a six-minute piece that pulls at you with every note. As you listen to the slow build, your neck immediately lengthens, your eyes close and the energy sways to the tips of your fingers. These are the same movements that you find in the death defying drops and twirls in ballroom spaces. The crowd is affixed to the energy in the middle of the room, the person who is truly the embodiment of a spirit yearning for an outlet. That same spirit dances in the Bubbles of Calsac’s Rosé de Craie. The movement of this wine is a journey that begins in one place and ends in another. It won’t let go of your attention until the performance is over.
Open the bottle. View the canvas. Notice when the room changes.
Resources:
For the meaning behind some of Gomez's works, click here.
Kwamé Azure Gomez Instagram Profile
Sound & Vision Interview featuring Kwamé Azure Gomez
To purchase Etienne Calsac's Rosé de Craie, visit our partner Convive
Etienne Calsac - Instagram Profile
Comments