Corps et âmes

The exhibition “Corps et âmes” explores the significance of the body in contemporary thought as expressed in the works of some twenty artists in the Pinault Collection. In the matrix-like curves of the Bourse de Commerce, these bodies form a choreography, a multiple rondo. this journey through the Pinault Collection invites viewers to rediscover, in the words of Jacques Rancière, the “possession of all their vital energies”. Freed from all mimetic constraints, the body—whether photographed, sculpted, drawn, filmed, or painted—does not cease to reinvent itself. This grants art an essential organicity that allows it, like an umbilical cord, to take the pulse of the human soul. Art seizes the energies and vital flows of our thoughts and inner lives to create a sensorial, humanist experience of otherness. Forms metamorphose, freeing themselves from figuration to seize, hold onto, and allow our soul and consciousness to emerge, as in David Hammons’ Body Prints. It is no longer a matter of merely painting bodies, instead embodying the forces that run through them, to bring to light what is buried and invisible, and to open up the shadows.