Over the top, undercover

"Exploring the city, the contours of objects, the spirals of language, and sometimes those of obsession, the works of Jonathan Martin, R. Moreno, and Clémence de La Tour du Pin engage with the systems that shape perception. Each artist identifies and subverts the strategies that guide the gaze, channel desire, and shape existences—in order to disrupt or unsettle the automation of everyday life. 

Over the top, undercover explores the tensions within the realm of the sensible: its elasticity, its manipulations, and the interdependence between what is put on display and what remains hidden. The artists examine what mises en scène conceal through seduction, and what they express in code—the mechanisms of the unconscious, of debt, and of delirium. They explore what lies beyond or beneath the surface, in particles of air, the lining of clothes or the inside of handbags.  

Over the top, undercover operates on various levels of matter and language. The exhibition moves from horizons to back doors, toward what shapes our relationship to fantasy, domination, and interference. It consists of suspicious, sometimes distorted visions; rotating poems; trompe-l’œil in the subtext. It thus drifts into the undetectable: magnetic waves and affections, operations of transfer, infestation, and short-circuiting." 

Salomé Burstein, Exhibition curator

_{Photo: © Esmire & Erwan}