DOWN BY THE WATER | group exhibition | Paris

Down by the Water

MAY 1st - MAY 24th
20 RUE SAINT ROCH 75001 PARIS

BLAISE SCHWARTZ, CLAIRE FAHDS, CAMILLE MCOUAT, ELODIE VAGH WEINMANN, GAËTAN HENRIOUX, GERARD CASTELLI, GIUSEPPE GONELLA , JULIEN SPIANTI.

curated by A Thousand Monkeys

Bodies of water operate under their own set of laws, or perhaps, a pointed absence of them.
They can be a place of deliberate exhibition and involuntary vulnerability, of narcissism and anonymity.
Here, the body is both displayed and dissolved. Water is a mirror that only ever offers an unstable, distorted reflection.
It promises cleansing and renewal, yet harbors unseen depths. This duality between surface and depth, between self-possession and loss of control is central to the works gathered here.
Unguarded Narcissus figures, caught mid-gesture, populate this exhibition. They are bodies at rest and on display, betraying the anxieties of modern selfhood.
In this space, the act of looking becomes layered. The figure on the shore or the pool side is both subject and object, a narcissist gazing at their own reflection.
Down by the Water is about the art of ambivalence: the water’s surface offers a moment of self-absorption, a quiet intimacy with one’s own image, only to be perpetually broken by the next wave, the next passerby, the intrusion of the outside world.