Named after the song by Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, the « In a Sentimental Mood » exhibition offers a journey through every facet of love. Gathering the work of eight artists from different generations and backgrounds – Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Jiri Kovanda, Myriam Mechita, Daphné Navarre, Marylène Negro, Jack Pierson, Alessandro Raho and Jimmy Robert – the exhibition conceived by Vanessa Desclaux explores the experience of love in its universality as well as ultimate singularity.

Through films, installations, sculptures and portraits, the exhibition brings together desire and longing, sensuality and melancholia, using contemporary imagery to express the complexity of human feelings. By drawing on sounds, visual or gestural codes, each exhibit develops a unique approach to exploring the limitations of language in expressing the depth of an emotion. Reinventing the love letter, tapping the poetic possibilities of an object, conjuring a loving embrace – these are some of the ways chosen by the artists to capture the many moods of romantic reverie.

Born in 1981, Vanessa Desclaux works as an independent curator, but is also the author of essays on art and a regular contributor to the specialized press in Europe. Currently an art history teacher at Dijon’s Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art, she is also pursuing a PhD at the University of London’s Goldsmiths College.

Atlanta, 2012
Marylène Negro

Statement of Intent by Vanessa Desclaux, curator of the exhibition

Love takes on different forms in various cultures, eras, contexts and situations. It is ageless, classless and genderless. It is an essentially dialogical feeling in that it presupposes a relationship, either real or imagined, with another being, subject/object of the lover’s desire, fantasies, tenderness and caring. Yet to express love is a most intimate act of identity-building. Roland Barthes felt the “necessity” of paying tribute to the lover’s discourse, something he believed had fallen into “utter solitude” and was now relegated to a debased, repressed and forlorn position in contemporary culture. Calling out the poverty of the discourse about love, and praising the richness of the lover’s discourse, Barthes tried to capture its multiple manifestations in language, embracing the fragmented, and unstable destiny of love itself. In the opening quote, author Philippe Sollers suggests that art may be the perfect medium for love inasmuch as it offers a different, yet equally sensuous and physical experience of it. The exhibition “In a Sentimental Mood” invites visitors to wander through a series of spaces, guided by a constellation of objects and images into worlds where desire, memories and fantasies are reconstructed, words of dedication or loneliness uttered, loved and loving bodies glimpsed. Artists Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Jiri Kovanda, Myriam Mechita, Daphné Navarre, Marylène Negro, Jack Pierson, Alessandro Raho and Jimmy Robert use all their skills to engage the visitors’ imagination and senses, luring them into the complex web of stories that make up the exhibition’s fabric. Whether eloquent or laconic, through unequivocal presence or the allegorical space created by objects and fragments, these exhibits take visitors on a sentimental journey to the heart of one of humanity’s most universal, yet elusive experiences.