EX-POSE(S)

Feminine Duo: The sculptures of Henri Laurens

Our attention is drawn to the pair of bronze sculptures, The Little Musician and The Little Spanish Girl (1932). The artists discovered these works in the Donation Jardot collection in Belfort. The figures immediately captured their gaze, standing out from the artist’s otherwise frozen geometric frameworks – they become natural, organic, bodies that breathe and radiate autonomy. Each figure seems already imbued with transformation, where body and movement turn into a subject-in-becoming, an object of the sensory resonance of the feminine form.

The choreographic approach of the female duo unfolds from observing the postures of these sculptures, gradually evolving into an exploration of the moving body. A full repertoire of poses emerges, organized into a metronomic rhythm – the body moves in a state of transformation, as if the sculpture is shaping itself in the very moment. The poses then flow through varying speeds and dynamics, until they spill into the surrounding space and spark entirely unexpected encounters, beyond any prescribed order.

Henri Laurens’ early Cubist figures break the body into geometric forms while retaining an inner dynamism and rhythm – echoes of a time when art sought new ways to render reality through fragmentation and perspective. Laurens began as a stonemason and sculptural craftsman, learning respect for material, form, and the subtleties of manual skill. In Montparnasse, he encountered contemporary artistic currents, and from 1911 devoted himself to Cubism – his figures were at first geometric, gradually evolving into natural, organic forms, vibrant with movement and inner energy.

Masculine duo: The Sculptures of Ousmane Sow

Our attention turns to Ousmane Sow’s series on the Nouba people from the mid-1980s, where he places the soul within the body of his sculptural work. The bronze sculpture Couple of Hand-to-Hand Wrestlers, created in 1988, reveals an extraordinary sense of anatomy, characteristic of his art. It masterfully expresses the struggle of man, contending with himself and with the world. Encountering this work, displayed on Rue de Valois in Paris, Héla Fattoumi and Éric Lamoureux felt a desire to translate this sculptural corporeality into the living movement of the dancers’ bodies.

The choreographic approach of the male duo arises from a situation in which they explore the sensations evoked by physical contact, as embodied in the sculpture. The dancers construct a repertoire of “reference figures” connected to the imagined world of struggle. These figures are linked in slow motion – between harshness and sensuality, between opposing forces and fused energies that disrupt perception and awaken an inner turbulence. The performers observe one another, measuring themselves in physical density, anatomy, and in the dance they project into each other.

Focused on the depiction of humanity, Ousmane Sow created in series, initially turning his attention to African ethnic groups, and later to those of the Americas. Drawing inspiration from photography, film, history, and ethnology, his larger-than-life figures are sculpted without the use of models. In 1987, he exhibited at the French Cultural Centre in Dakar, presenting his first series on the Nouba wrestlers. Six years later, in 1993, he showed his work at Documenta in Kassel, Germany, and in 1995 at Palazzo Grassi on the occasion of the centenary of the Venice Biennale. He was the first African artist invited to the French Académie des Beaux-Arts.