Bétonsalon – Center for Art and Research pre­sents TEMPLE OF LOVE, a solo show and new com­mis­sion by Gaëlle Choisne (b. 1985, France) con­sisting in a sculp­tural instal­la­tion addressing the con­cept of love.

At Bétonsalon, Gaëlle Choisne explores the poten­tiality of love as an atti­tude and form of resis­tance, a chan­neling source of pro­foundly polit­ical actions. In TEMPLE OF LOVE, the artist con­siders love as a social matter, sub­ject to power strug­gles and a cat­a­lyst for courage and trans­gres­sion. In this new body of work, she pre­sents sculp­tures, tex­tile ban­ners, and a feast of oys­ters as offer­ings, sum­moning the sub­ver­sively erotic Babylonian god­dess Ishtar and the cigarettes of Haitian vaudoo spirit Erzulie Dantor. The artist makes use of the lan­guage of archi­tec­ture, organic shapes, per­ma­cul­ture and an abun­dance of tex­tile mate­rials to com­pose a col­lec­tive living habitat. Gaëlle Choisne reap­pro­pri­ates the fea­tures of the temple and those of the exhi­bi­tion space: a place for con­gre­ga­tion, sharing, and refuge where gaze and dis­course are cre­ated and expe­ri­enced.

A sanc­tuary, a place of life and encoun­ters, the space of TEMPLE OF LOVE cre­ated by Gaëlle Choisne will wel­come, from September through December 2018, a series of tem­po­rary invi­ta­tions, per­for­mances, in situ inter­ven­tions, work­shops and con­fer­ences. Named “LUVs” according to the neol­o­gism reshaping the term “love” to deprive it of its severity, as a series of flirts, these events will com­plete and inter­ro­gate the pur­pose of the exhi­bi­tion, offering mul­tiple, con­fusing and mixed influ­ences.

Gaëlle Choisne (1985, France) grad­u­ated from the National School of Fine Arts of Lyon. In January 2017, she was admitted into the Rijksakademie, after a one-year res­i­dency at the Cité inter­na­tionale des arts in Paris. Her work has been fea­tured in bien­nials, group shows and work­shops, such as at the Beirut Art Center for the 13th Sharjah Biennial (2017), MAC Lyon (2016), the Lyon Biennial (2015) and the Musée d’art mod­erne de la Ville de Paris (2018). TEMPLE OF LOVE is her first insti­tu­tional solo show.

The artist addresses the issues of dis­aster, the exploita­tion of resources and the remains of colo­nialism in dynamic instal­la­tions which mutate their envi­ron­ment. She unravels these themes through a series of work­shops with school stu­dents in Port-au-Prince (Haiti) and is cur­rently focusing on a pro­ject involving the manip­u­la­tion of raw mate­rials to elab­o­rate socially and envi­ron­men­tally-con­scious urbanism methods.

The exhi­bi­tion TEMPLE OF LOVE is sup­ported by the untilthen gallery.

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