Associating the sentiment of love with scientific knowledge, such is the premise of the new De l’amour exhibition at the Palais de la Découverte. While in France a simple “I love you” declaration is run-of-the-mill, love is plural in Greece and four words cohabit to define it—from a fetish baby blanket to love at first sight.
Through an approach that is as scientific as itis social and poetic, between works of art, tales, films, installations and playful workshops, the exhibition questions the place of love in our lives, under all its different faces. A fun way to apprehend the sentiments that upset us.
The gallery of attachments
Having barely arrived in this first part of the exhibition, the scenography sets the tone. What is love all about? We find ourselves facing a huge heart, covered with beautiful white feathers. Its name? Pulsions.
This installation, signed Paule Sardou, leads to the first gallery, amongst which twenty small cultural and popular scenes—from the crystalization of Stendhal to the advent of the mobile phone—focus on different loves. The result is a wandering in a passion-red room in the middle of flowery citations and poems.
Heart throb for the rather obsessional collection of fetish items, set up by Matthieu Lemarié, as an echo to Donald Winnicott’s theory of the comfort object as a ”transition” between childhood and the adult age.
Love as seen by science
Love is exposed, but mainly explored. Immersion in the second part of the museum, inside the Gallery of Sciences, where love is studied like a chemical phenomenon.
On the programme, amusing devices on sex, eroticism and consent along with an audio-visual installation: Parlez-moi d’amour where eight highly professional specialists speak out, such as sociologist Marie Bergströmand chemist Marcel Hibert. Result: it’s ocytocin, which is the love molecule.
Total success for the exhibition: the great scenography that illustrates in a playful way, with different heights of buildings, the key figures on places of encounter. Fun fact: social networks are in fifth position!
Love at the Palais de la découverte, starting at €9 full rate
Also discover Murakami at the Ballroom of Galerie Perrotin.
