In the exhibition, the works of Neja Zorzut and Aurélien Potier create an affective environment, in which conflict does not appear as an eruption, but rather persists as a condition of constant tension between opposing forces, choreographies of control, and signs that function as omens, organising attention towards potential outcomes.

Zorzut’s installation Stubble Field spreads across the gallery floor, where soft leather foam elements are arranged into a landscape of organic configurations that recall musculature or bound bodies. Softness here functions not as comfort but as constraint, an absorbing surface that holds force in suspension. Embedded plexiglass objects act as markers of potential action, shifting between lingering and striking, and destabilising the distinction between observation and attack, anticipation and execution. The work understands violence not as accidental, but as something that operates through controlled proximity and delayed action, so that the present becomes charged with signs that influence how the future is interpreted. In Zorzut’s practice, violence persists not only through destruction but also through repetition, anticipation, and the disciplined organization of space and bodies.

Embedded in Zorzut’s installation, a choreography of emotional and bodily control held in a state of anticipation correlates with the pervasive affective and physical tension in Potier’s works, articulated primarily through the contradictory materials of steel, wax, cables, and organic matter. As his sculptures pierce and protrude from the walls or hang suspended from the ceiling, the exhibition unfolds as an emotionally charged environment in which sharp spikes and exposed wires articulate anger and violence, revealing dynamics of extraction and domination. At the same time, eroded steel surfaces and the presence of red beeswax, lending the works a bodily and porous register, imbue them with a sense of fragility and potential disintegration. Together, these elements hold a fundamental paradox that lies at the core of Potier’s practice. Proximity can be understood here as force held in suspension, charged with the risk of transgression. In Zorzut’s work, it is neither intimate nor safe, but becomes a danger activated through touch. In Potier’s practice, touch still carries the possibility of repair — wax, which can be seen as mending the open wounds, holds out a tentative hope for the healing of relations.