DEFECT DESIRE, Aurélien Potier

For this new season, two young French artists are being welcomed to the MO.CO. Panacée. Laura Garcia-Karras and Aurélien Potier will each be presenting their first solo exhibition in a public institution. To prepare their exhibition, MO.CO. Montpellier Contemporain invited them for four months of artist residency to enable them to create a series of new works and immerse themselves in the exhibition spaces. Beyond a first formal interpretation that could separate them, the affective approach of their respective practices motivates this choice. It is the gesture that is most important to these two artists.

Aurélien Potier questions the world surrounding him in his practice of sculpture, installation, writing, engraving, ceramics and performance. It's not really the medium that matters, but the relationship to the environment that the artist builds and destroys as much with words as with materials. Observing that the world in which we live oscillates nervously through opposing forces, between fragility, vulnerability and anger, failure and desire, emptiness and fullness, the artist proposes a delve into the exhibition space, deliberately re-wired, re-furnished and co-nnected, like the bodies that will pass through and inhabit it.

Image : Aurélien Potier, Edge (détail), installation in-situ en mortier produit à partir de chaux, Exposition collective « Ni drame ni suspense », Triangle-Astérides, Marseille, 2023. Photo : Aurélien Mole

Biography

Born in 1992, Aurélien Potier lives and works in Marseille. Aurélien Potier participated in artistic residencies at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Triangle - Astérides (Marseille), Center for Contemporary Arts & GSS (Glasgow, Scotland), and the contemporary art center la Synagogue de Delme (France). His work has also been presented at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris, France), Triangle - Astérides (Marseille, France), CAPC Musée d'art contemporain (Bordeaux, France), CCA (Glasgow, Scotland), la Casa Encendida (Madrid, Spain), Art Basel (Switzerland), Gianni Manhattan Gallery (Vienna, Austria), Sissi Club (Marseille, France), Air de Paris Gallery (Romainville, France ), Sultana Gallery (Paris, France), Cooper Union (New York, USA), Belsunce Projects (Marseille, France), Centre International de Poésie (Marseille, France), Montez Press Radio (New York, USA). He is a former graduate of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie (Amsterdam, Netherlands) and studied at the Cooper Union School of Art (New York, USA). His work is represented by Gianni Manhattan Gallery, Vienna.

Curators : Caroline Chabrand and Anya Harrison
Assisted by Deniz Yoruc

Under the artistic direction of Numa Hambursin, Chief Executive Officer
Invitation by Vincent Honoré.