La Peur au Ventre
Fear is at the top of the emotional scale. It spares no species, nor any social order of which it is one of the powerful factors of cohesion. And destruction.
No power, be it religious, political, military or economic, has ever hesitated to govern by using such a contagious emotion on crowds and individuals. Fear is the cursed part of sensitivity.
It is consciousness of the world before being its rejection, by the state of acute alert into which it plunges us. The world reveals itself to the fearful as well as the curious.
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Faced with it, man dreams of himself as a reckless hero, capable of confronting and defeating the demons that assail him. By lending body and face to human anguish, the artist occupies a singular place in this fight.
But his courage is not measured by his recklessness. On the contrary, the artist would be closer to the figure of the anti-hero. He assumes his fear not in refusal and negation but in the acceptance and recognition of his sensitive value.
Jérôme Poggi
This exhibition was organized at the initiative of and in partnership with the art dealer and collector Luc Bellier, who in 2004 had invited Jérôme Poggi to work with him on a year long publication project centered on the theme of fear. Fifteen years later, this collaboration gives rise to this exhibition, which also mixes contemporary art as well as modern and ancient.
