Based in Marseille, France.
Aurélien Potier's works create tension-filled spaces. Twisted metal spikes merge into a stretched alphabet. Mortar splashed onto the walls forms impacts whose texture crumbles away. Supple cables choreograph chaos, in which salt crystals seem to materialize as short-circuit points.
Relentlessly, tenderness and violence, urgency and relief collide, echoing a world imbued with the same contradictory impulses. The materials face off in forms regurgitated by an extractivist system that nonetheless created them. While they can be read as symbols of power dynamics, they offer a meeting point, even a fusion, between their constituent elements—sparks ready to ignite their surroundings. Hence, they seemingly embody desires and emotions, which constitute a form of resistance in themselves.
Written by Isabelle Henrion.