Featuring an impressive roster of artists – from Louise Bourgeois to Tracey Emin – the multi-media show opens today at White Cube Paris
“When the gallery asked me to curate a show at White Cube Paris salon, I was exhilarated and also thought, fuck. How to dare … ” says Michèle Lamy in the run up to her Sweet Lust exhibition, which opens today in Paris. Despite being nervous, Lamy also states a feeling of home in the show, which celebrates the work of artists who have inspired her throughout her life, and investigates a subject that has fascinated her for many years: the body.
Curated alongside the White Cube’s senior director, Mathieu Paris, Sweet Lust “celebrates a poetics of the body” through works which date from 1929 to the present day. The angle from which the show looks at the human form is broad – ranging from expressions of corporeality to carnal desires and impulses – but the works in the exhibition are united in their agitation of “preconceptions of the body and its representation.”
The show is a mixed-media, multi-artist event reflective of the former AnOther cover star’s out-of-the box thinking, and includes everything from drawing and painting to sculpture and installation works. Among the 25 artists featured are mid-century disruptors Hans Bellmer and Louise Bourgeois; YBA legends Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas; younger artists Somaya Critchlow and Korakrit Arunanondchai, and also Lamy’s partner, Rick Owens, whose sculptural furniture will be on show.
“The body is beautiful and we are happy to present a story of our time, one that proposes a new stage of opportunity and strength,” says Lamy of the show. “I hope that my Deleuzian assemblage, like a code of conduct, will allow you to desire the show as an ensemble, even though it’s in their singularities that I adore each and every one of the artists. Sweet Lust everybody!”
Sweet Lust is curated by Michèle Lamy and Mathieu Paris and is on view at White Cube Paris from 3 March – 30 April 2022.