Michel Houellebecq and Jean Painlevé vernissage at Air de Paris

For his first exhibiton at Air de Paris “Quatrains”, Michel Houellebecq merges two worlds by isolating and juxtaposing verse and image. He presents work from his collections of poems “La poursuite du bonheur” (1991), “Le sens du combat” (1996), “Éditions Flammarion” and “Non-réconcilié” (2014) as images on the wall, and accentuates them with three songs from “Présence Humaine”, the album the produced with Bertrand Burgalat in 2000.

Jean Painlevé‘s psychedelic film “The Poetry of Liquid Crystals” (1978) makes up the second part of the exhibition – an abstract film, inspired by and describing the beauty of nature with all it’s colours, shapes and textures. His interest in microphotography and scientific cinema led Painlevé to discover a way to make the invisible visible. The film describes the development of liquid crystals under the influence of temperature and pressure, a process from darkness to transparency through an endless amount of colour.

“The Poetry of Liquid Crystals” and “Quatrains” is on view until November 3rd 2018 at Air de Paris 32 Rue Louise Weiss, 75013, Paris.

Photo Paul Mouginot