“OPERA III: ZOO ‘The Day of Heaven and Hell’” is Pol Taburet’s first solo exhibition in an institution. Born in 1997, the artist is presenting paintings as well exploring new mediums such as sculpture and installation. The works, many of which are new, create an itinerary that unfolds from scene to scene throughout the Fondation.

The exhibition unfolds over two acts around different passages between inside and outside, darkness and light, dreams and awakenings, which all evoke the times of birth and death, central themes in the work of Pol Taburet.

Creatures at the intersection of myths and cartoons, their quasi-human faces are attached to a child’s cart. Their closed eyes invite us into reverie. One room houses Belly (2023), a large fountain which symbolises fertility and immortality in many myths. Its rounded shape evokes the body of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, beauty, and sexuality. Here, the fountain is dried up and rusty, bearing the traces and weight of a time which seems to have caught up with it.

With My dear (2023), a dining room standing in the centre of the space, is erected like a temple to a deity, hidden under a large tablecloth, like the monster under a child’s bed. For Our Children (2022) deals with the theme of the fall and the opposition between celestial and terrestrial forces, with its female bodies fertilizing the earth, of which only the legs elevated by stilettos are visible. Reinterpreted biblical episodes offer a narrative that opens up new mythologies, anchored in the strangeness of everyday life. The Christian figure is found in Christ’s tongue (2021), a painting of a being spitting out a crucifix in a rejection of an entire belief system.

OPERA III: ZOO “The Day of Heaven and Hell” is on view through September 3 @ Lafayette Anticipations 9 Rue du Plâtre, 75004 Paris.