TEMPO Chapter 1 : Comment c’est (les choses qui remontent)  

Since 2023, In extenso has been pleased to host TEMPO, the annual program of the association Les Ateliers, which highlights the work of artists who have benefited from a temporary studio within their premises at La Diode over the course of the year.

Two chapters brought together by a similar, yet slightly evolved title. It starts with a statement of observation: How It Is (things that Resurface). Like the search for a leak within an apartment building, inhabited by several people whose paths cross without necessarily intertwining, yet along whose walls water runs, we make an observation.

It is from this image of a leak, connecting the inhabitants, that we imagined what unites the temporary resident of the association Les Ateliers – those benefiting from a temporary studio for the current year. Their practices, though ogten dissimilar, nonetheless develop within a shared space. The In extenso team hence conducts an investigation, a search for the leak, to better apprehend what connects them. This method is far from irrelevant: it drows on a real incident, this year’s flooding at the Ateliers — thus bringing the artists together not only around a workspace, but also around a problem that is at once banal and unifying in terms of neighborly life.

We thus observe hos flows – emotions, bodily fluids, water – run through and connect the artists’ practices in this first chapter. Here we find works by Gahé Daubercies, Amélie Rollin, L. Gloria da Silva and Eldaire Terrisse, linked by these trincklings : flowers weep, a sofa sniffles, tears run down the cheeks of a figure still submerged by sobs, pear bead on a branch like droplets, a house exhales mist…

Objects that are neither truly miniature nor fully human-scaled populate the domestic universe evoked by L. Gloria’s practice : a world of everyday life, subtly shifted from our own. Things mimic human gestures—crying, breathing—translating the emotions we project onto them. Thisimitation is not surprising: it is part of the objects’ vocabulary, which goes beyond their domesticated status and leans toward complicity. Like punctuation marks clutching the edge of a letter, objects extend the humans who welcome them.

Further on, other beings are also crying, in resistance to their current condition. Against this seeping soundscape Amélie explores our relationship with the animal and plants, at once childish and dreamlike
once childish and dreamlike, the jardin chagrin [sorrowful garden] grows ; an installation of fossil-flower
in order to survive in a barren world. Tension takes shape in the material itself: ceramics bloom in plastic containers—manufactured objects, tied to candid memories—which collect their tears. These fountains are surrounded by snails, the only other creatures that seem to inhabit this world. Shells and spikes prove to be the necessary attributes for facing it : a balancing act between protection and defense, between vulnerability and aggressiveness.

On other grounds, Eldaire imagines ways of forming community within subtly familiar, mythological, queer landscapes, freed from dynamics of oppression. In the open air, figures who enbrace their hybrid monstruosity stand at the edge —of a boundary, of tears, of an orgasm. An inner world is revealed on the sheets that serve as the canvas for the paintings, recalling the skin they once enveloped. As in a dream, nature and bodies merge until they become unseparable, fluid, gently blending fantasy and survival strategy.

The bodily fluids present throughout the exhibitionthus persists like a leak. But is a flood, in the end, not simply leak that rises upward? An overwhelming feeling that boils, then resurfaces, climbing like mold and turning the world upside down.

This is where we encounter Gahé, seeking balance upside down. In Le Poirier (French word for both handstand and pear tree), they literally do a handstand, performing with a derisive humor that pokes fun at notions of grounding—namely that in personal development—as well as to all the rituals put in place to try to cope with a world that is coming undone. To cut the pear in two–. The absurd continues through metaphors: pears—fruits that symbolize sluggishness—become active here, falling like droplets. A
slug slides on its belly, gently escaping, the sound of its viscious trail mingling with the drops of the flowers’ tears. By questioning the dynamics and transmission of narratives, Gahé thus explores the loss of meaning.

This logic brings us back to our titles. Inspired by Samuel Beckett’s book How It Is, in which the narrator lays out, through fragmented thoughts oscillating between scattered memories and an uncertain present, their path through dense matter. Like water escaping from a wall, they attempt to carve out a passage, slipping into the smallest crevice. An evacuation of excess moisture spills out through the window to let fresh air in.

Then it begins (again). The second chapter brings together works by Sarah Bazire, Cristina Chapier, Lorenzo Partenza, and Lorette Pouillon, evoking a beginning, a departure. How it begins ( with a draft of air)*.

*Commencer (par un courant d’air), with Sarah Bazire, Cristina Chapier, Lorenzo Partenza, Lorette Pouillon, 17 January – 7 February 2026

Manue Bureau, Katia Porro, Amélie Terrade

THE ARTISTS :

Gahé Daubercies lives and works in Clermont-Ferrand. They graduated from ESAM Caen/Cherbourg and ESACM in 2024. Gahé’s practice is nourished by the stories we tell ourselves, by different forms of memory and traces, and by the relationships we build with other living beings. They seek
ways of inhabiting space and, more broadly, a world that isbeing destroyed. Gahé reflects on working collectively, while also connecting to what came before us. Alongside their visual art practice, they train in
various bodily practices.

Amélie Rollin (born in Bourg-en-Bresse) lives and works in Clermont-Ferrand. She graduated from ESACM in 2024. She creates installations that explore our relationships with animal and plant life, and draws some of her forms from childlike imaginaries.

L. Gloria da Silva is a graduate of ESAD Valence and ESACM. She lives and works in Clermont-Ferrand. One morning, she panics upon discovering that all the things in her home
seem to have conspired to express the ailments of her body and mind. In her doubt toward design and art, L. Gloria apprehends the objects she lives with as a language of her own and explores their ways of betraying.

Eldaire Terrisse is a transmasculine artist, who graduated from the École Supérieure d’Art de Clermont Métropole in June 2024. Their work speaks of fantasies, memories, and queer survival strategies in an increasingly fascist world. They construct an imaginary in which everything transforms, transitions, and constantly adapts to chosen or unchosen changes. They invite you to dream of a queer, communal world, to lose yourself in hallucinations of magical creatures that will transform your bodies, to travel through familiar yet distorted landscapes, and to envision other ways of being together. Their practice focuses primarily on image-making, spatial installation, and micro-publishing. They work with color, texture, and light to tell stories.