Galerie du Lendemain

La Galerie du Lendemain presents "Subjective Beauty. The Choice of the Male Body", its second group exhibition of the 2022-2023 season. An exhibition that follows on from the one devoted to the male nude, in spring 2022. This time, the selected artists were asked to respond to the following question: what might define beauty in art? In gathering their responses, well beyond the representation of nature and its splendour to be preserved, which might have been the first thing to capture our artists' attention, it is the choice of the human figure and more precisely that of the "male figure" that has guided their gaze. Through this human representation of the masculine, each artist is thus able to express their thoughts, their dreams, their vision of reality and their intimate desires. Is the male body therefore, today, once again, as in the time of ancient Greece, the artistic representation of beauty? This is what these works suggest — paintings, photographs, drawings and collages — which are also an alternative to the brutality of our era, to conflict, to discord. These works might have taken on a disturbing, shocking dimension, for art can also serve that purpose, in order to carry an essential message to the world; on the contrary, here, the works approach the subject of the exhibition with a dimension that is at once universal and intimate, simply attempting to capture those moments of beauty that only artists know how to perceive: in the abandon of a body in motion, the tender embrace and the impulse towards freedom that show the way, the open smile that lights up a face, the discovery of an island where one can live naked for the length of a summer, the sharing and harmony within a group, and many other details that the artists have chosen to reveal here in order to respond, subjectively, to our question, thus elevating our minds and bringing gentleness to our hearts.