Zachęta Project Room

curator: Magda Kardasz
cooperation: Julia Harasimowicz
exhibition soundtrack: Arghtee
partner of the exhibition: Institute Français à Varsovie

The exhibition is part of the French artist Gaëlle Choisne’s Temple of Love project, inspired by the Roland Barthes’ The Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. It is a heterogeneous mix of existing sculptures from the exhibition shown in w Bétonsalon — Centre d’art et de recherche in Paris and a new production for the Zachęta Project Room, including a new experimental video inspired by the artist’s recent visit in Haiti, from where her family derive from.

The artist says: “the challenges of the exhibition are always based on uncertain and precarious balances of the objects presented between organic and artificial, the chains are fragile and precious links, sensual and sign of confinement sometimes”.

The video evokes the links between Poland and Haiti through the difficult history, retraces in a discursive manner between filmed moments and official archives of stories of death, love, politics, poetry, cultural interbreeding through the figures of Roland Barthes, Karl Marx and Stuart Hall punctuated by the original intoxicating sound from the musician The Snowhoe, production, Arghtee.

The sculptures are a formal mixture of political banner and cloth painting-sculpture, gripping on them, various objects or gri-gris, pockets-pockets and abstract flat areas engage in space with different posture. Some of them have shape of popular tiny altars.

Gaëllle Choisne (b. 1985) – graduated from École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, since 2017 has been studying in Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. The artist addresses the issues of dis­aster, the exploita­tion of resources and the remains of colo­nialism in dynamic instal­la­tions which mutate their envi­ron­ment. She cooperates with Paris based untilthen gallery, that hosted her first solo show in 2018. Choisne also took part in 13th Sharjah Biennial and Lyon Biennial. First part of the TEMPLE OF LOVE project was presented in the w Bétonsalon — Centre d’art et de recherche in Paris in 2018. The second ongoing part, entitled TEMPLE OF LOVE – Adorable is presented in the Mistake Room in Los Angeles.

^{Temple of Love installation in Bétonsalon — Centre d’art et de recherche  in Paris, phot. Aurelien Mole. Courtesy of the artist}