Art-Icon’s “LOVE” Exhibition: An Anthropology of Simulated Affect Arrives in Paris During Art Week on May 26th
Opening during Paris Art Week, contemporary exhibition “Love” transforms the Bastille Design Center into an immersive environment where intimacy, desire, and emotion are viewed through the lens of media, performance, and contemporary visual culture.Presented by Art-Icon from May 26th at 19H, until May 28th, the project brings together the art of renown artists including Marina Abramović, ORLAN, Ai Weiwei, Roger Ballen, Jacob Aue Sobol, alongside other renowned contemporary voices and over 200 emerging photographers. Curated by Slavica Veselinović and Danila Tkachenko, the exhibition approaches love not as a private emotion, but as a constructed system of images, gestures, and affect shaped by contemporary culture.
Spanning photography, installation, video art, and performance, “LOVE” traces the transformation of emotion into visual language — examining how intimacy, desire, and identity are continuously produced, aestheticized, and consumed within contemporary society.
Marina Abramović presenting her seminal 1975 performance work Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful
Marina Abramović, “Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful” (1975)
ORLAN’s radical deconstruction of femininity, identity, and the body
Ai Weiwei’s rare early erotic drawings examining desire and body politics
Roger Ballen’s psychologically charged works exploring darker dimensions of the human psyche
Jacob Aue Sobol’s stark black-and-white portraits balancing rawness and emotional intensity
Alisa Resnik’s haunting photographic works centered on intimacy and melancholy
Zoë Urness’ cinematic visual narratives exploring Indigenous motherhood and spirituality
Marat Guelman and ± Komma’s AI-collaborative project reframing collective fear through aesthetics
Dominique Renson contributes expressive painted works exploring raw human sentiment.
Set within the industrial architecture of the Bastille Design Center, “LOVE” positions itself less as a conventional exhibition and more as a visual research space — one that asks how contemporary culture teaches us to desire, perform, and ultimately consume emotion itself.
Words: Sara Vukosavljevic