“My gesture is addressed at the human body – the complete erogenous zone.”
(Alina Szapocznikow, 1972)
Works by three female artists from three generations, from sculpture through to film, come together in a dialogue about the body as the origin of all that is perceptible. The works of the Polish sculptor Alina Szapocznikow (born 1926 in Kalisz, PL – died 1973 in Paris, FR) have been rediscovered in recent years. With Szapocznikow as the starting-point, the exhibits are situated in a field of tension between the primal instincts of lust and a yearning for death versus the routines and actions of everyday life, which manifest themselves in an engagement with changing artistic material. The works of Kateřina Vincourová (born 1968 in Prague, CZ) and Camille Henrot (born 1978 in Paris, FR) also reveal a conflicting language of the subconscious as an erotic source of creation in the world of things, their technical reproduction and transformation. Here, death – in the sense of Bataille – is not just a constant companion, but undergoes a bold fusion to become the bittersweet culmination of all life.
