"OPERA III: ZOO 'The Day of Heaven and Hell'” is Pol Taburet’s first solo exhibition in an institution. Born in 1997, the artist is presenting paintings as well exploring new mediums such as sculpture and installation. The works, many of which are new, create an itinerary that unfolds from scene to scene throughout the Fondation.

Lafayette Anticipations becomes a domestic space inhabited by visions that take us into a reality close to hallucination. Drawing on both personal and collective mythologies, tales, cartoons and art history, the works presented in this exhibition are inspired by the imagination of childhood and its capacity to create new worlds.

The architecture becomes charged with presence, the inanimate comes to life, the monstrous hides in the shadows and emotions take shape. Figures emerge from paintings and sculptures like ghosts, bodies caught in the artificial lights of a living room, a theatre, a strip club. Born in a space of intimacy—a space that is domestic but also one of memory, dream or fantasy—these “spirit-figures” break free to come to bring the Fondation’s exhibition spaces to life."OPERA III - The Day of Heaven and Hell" is Pol Taburet’s first solo exhibition in an institution, in which he both extends his painting practice and explores new media.

Throughout the exhibition, the strange mingles with the familiar and the works invent a human bestiary. What are the innermost impulses, visions, and desires that animate our minds and our bodies? Pol Taburet’s work invites us into the depths of the being, into its invisible, shameful, or untameable territories.

"OPERA III: ZOO 'The Day of Heaven and Hell'” is the latest chapter in a cycle dedicated to the powers of the imagination, here suspended somewhere between heaven and hell.

Curator Elsa Coustou