LES PRATICIENS DE L'INFERNAL 
EXPOSITION DE GROUPE

Annette et Lulu, Arnaud Biais, Johan Christ-Bertrand, Jeanne Leclercq, Paul R. Levante, Omar Rodriguez-Sanmartin, Jeanne Susplugas, Agathe Wiesner.

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Cyclical rhythms of bodies, whether celestial or terrestrial, demand to be taken seriously. This season had already begun to present itself as an ending in its own right. A fiercely overextended energy was nearing exhaustion—near depletion often comes with a reconfiguration of both spiritual and material beliefs, a

need to reconfigure everything from the ground up. The only good news, if you can say, lies in the nature of the cycle itself, that unending elliptic vortex. Nothing is ever fully gained, but nothing is ever entirely lost either.

 

This faltering burst gradually gives way to a renewed agency, driven by a determined effort to suspend—and perhaps reverse—an infernal cycle set in motion precisely seven years ago. Energies begin to open, magnetic fields (1) activate, planets align. The relentless and taxing periodic surge finally starts to shift, driven by sidereal forces as much as by the narratives of those “connected hydropaths” (2).

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In contrast to the previous exhibitions presented at collect|mc, The Practitioners of the Infernal assert themselves with deliberate force, breaking from established conventions. Less breathing room, more accumulation: works overlap freely, associations waver and drift, embracing instability as a condition.

What emerges is a form of disorder—one that does not signal collapse, but reversal. The works press forward, held in suspension; carrying with them the sense of an imminent movement. Scenarios unfold and intersect, shared allegories proliferate.

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“Not that the possibility of the sublime is rejected in principle, but the greatness

of artistic actions never lies where one commonly expects it.” (3)

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Stefania Angelini

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1.Magnetic Fields (1920), a collection of automatic prose texts by André Breton and Philippe Soupault.

2. Les Hydropathes, a Paris-based literary circle (1878–1884); here, the term refers to contemporary online gurus, linked to the rise of “conspirituality,” theorized in 2011 by Charlotte Ward and David Voas.

3. Jean-Yves Jouannais, L’Idiotie, Flammarion, 2017.

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