Titled Claude Cahun / Marcel Moore, this show aims to shed light on the exceptional research of Claude Cahun (born Lucy Schwob) who, along with her life partner and half-sister Marcel Moore (born Suzanne Malherbe), anticipated discussions on subjects of extreme relevance to contemporary society, such as gender and identity.

João Vilhena finds most of his subjects by collecting old photos, stereoscopies, and postcards, which play a central role in his work. Postcards and holiday snapshots are therefore bearers of memories, of a saudade, and evoke both the distance and the attachment to a place of belonging. A stereoscopic view* is for him, above all, a scopic impulse. Over the years, these photo-objects have become one of the artist’s field of research of his graphic journey .
João Vilhena’s work is also guided by his interest in the role of the viewer. Indeed, according to the artist, the gaze is what creates and gives a meaning to the artwork. The artist’s drawings, created with extreme precision and accuracy, engage with the viewer, proposing both visual puns, such as trompe-l’oeil and anamorphosis, and word games, such as spoonerisms and anagrams, thus creating a close link between images and words.
Moreover, João Vilhena’s works present a strong erotic charge that can be defined as the impulse that generates the desire to look. According to the words of the artist:
“Whoever produces an erotic image touches, immanently, the issue of representation”. In the context of this research, libido, the scopic and death drive, sacrifice and other
taboos have inspired his work for several years, including the exhibition Erotheism, Sacred Drawing presented in 2015 at Alberta Pane Gallery.
On the occasion of his new exhibition, Beau à la louche, João Vilhena’s drawings enter into a fictional dialogue with the imaginary field that stems from the theme of water. The exhibition is inspired by the absurd thought exercise of Sir Walter Raleigh, who claimed to be able to calculate the weight of smoke by subtracting the weight of the ashes from the weight of the cigar. In the wake of Sir Walter Raleigh thinking, João Vilhena argues that if up to 60 percent of the human body is composed of water and this is renewed by an average of 2.4 liters per day, how much desire is contained in this liquid when we talk about having mouth-watering (L’eau à la bouche)?

Therefore, Sir Walter Raleigh’s theory has played an important role in Joao Vilhena’s new drawings. The latter are inspired by photos of summer vacations at seaside resorts. These images, with sweeping sea views, conceal in themselves moments of carefree serenity.
Happy vacationers show their uninhibited bodies and sometimes dare some acrobatics. Praise of laziness and freedom, these images inspire sensuality and voluptuousness. Some of them get carried away and do not hesitate to kiss in front of the camera. Others seem to
be waiting only for that… In this exhibition, the artist invites us to plunge into an atmosphere at once nostalgic and erotic. Therefore, the artist’s love for enigmas is mixed with written and visual language, ultimately configuring itself as a “cartography of desire”. * Stereoscopic vision is an image-making technique, which conveys an illusion of three-dimensionality, similar to that generated by the binoclard vision of the human visual system.

Alberta Pane Gallery is pleased to present the third solo exhibition by the Italian artist Michelangelo Penso. In the Paris gallery, the interactive sculpture Human vibe accompanies a series of prints on aluminium, rubber and wood.

Michelangelo Penso’s aesthetics is inhabited by macro and micro-organisms. His work is strongly inspired by scientific iconography, mostly coming from mathematics, genetics, and astrophysics. His artworks, created from industrial materials such as polyester, rubber, resin or aluminium, evoke DNA chains as well as constellations and planetary systems.

Human vibe consists of a small meteorite-like mineral object equipped with a system of touch sensors, which send out sound frequencies according to captured vibrations. By interacting with Human vibe, we can “tune in” to a flow of information emitted by our body, which is normally undetectable for us. Interaction develops by touching both sides of the sculpture, which are coated with tin to enable capturing the electrical response from the skin (GSR). The enclosed technology (microcomputer, sensors, miniature audio systems) processes these signals continuously and makes the sculpture react with sound and vibrations.

Human vibe, located in the center of the exhibition space, is surrounded by a series of paintings (Frequencies) showing astro-seismograms coming from recordings of electromagnetic radiations emitted by three planetary systems (HD 10180, HIP 41378, TRAPPIST-1 ).

Stars, as human bodies, generate vibrations which can be recorded by specific sensors. These scientific discoveries provide today a better understanding of the functioning and composition of astronomical bodies. The exhibition Frequencies attempts to translate the invisible complexity of physical and biological interactions into a perceptible form or language. The artist invites us to become aware of the vibrations sent out by microscopic, human, and astronomical bodies. He encourages us to consider the reactions that these vibrations trigger in the elements that surround us on very different scales. As in a scientific laboratory, this exhibition allows to experience the imperceptible resonances that we produce. It also invites to look attentively at the shapes of the invisible frequencies of stars and planets.

Relations between humans and technological systems take an increasingly significant place in Michelangelo Penso’s latest research. In this context, he proposes us to experience frequencies, which link the infinitely big and the infinitely small: two systems that are invisible to the human eye.