FEDERICA DAURI, PIERRE MOLINIER, MAN RAY, MICHAEL SAYLES, LOUIS-PHILIPPE SCOUFARAS, ANTON STOIANOV.
Identity politics has come to a fundamentalist end, from gender emphasis to populist widespread.
This exhibition refers to Donatien Alphonse François de Sade and its oblique influence on artistic practice. Before “queer” became an academic and activist instrument to rewrite political and social relations based on marginalised forms of desire and sexuality, Sade proposed a total eroticisation of the world with its infinite variations of violence and desire. The paradox of his contradictory status, between Revolution and Aristocratic libertinage, Liberty and Terror, actor and witness, takes the form of a literature as mirror games that reflect both the implicit and the explicit, blasphemy and euphemism. The proto-revolutionary figure, incarcerated most of his adult lifetime, created an inspiring analogy between act of resistance and work of art and asked whether true revolution comes from changing society or changing oneself.
With sculpture, painting, drawing, photography, performance, sound and a juxtaposition of Modern and Contemporary positions, this ensemble of works insists on restraint and control applied to abrasive content, and how puritan visual art has become in regards of historical representation.
Louis-Philippe Scoufaras, Sade contre l’ĂŠtre SuprĂŞme, 2012, sound, 38 seconds loop