TEMPO Chapter 2: Commencer (par un courant d’air) 

An evacuation of excess humidity pours out through the window to let fresh air in.

This is where we left off: with the image of a flood, the need to air out the room. Not only because the first chapter of the exhibition was already overflowing with water, but also because it echoes a very real anecdote — the flood that occurred at Les Ateliers in 2025. An event that brought the artists together not only around a shared workspace, but also around a problem both banal and unifying, intrinsic to neighborly life. We saw Comment c’est last December with works by Gahé Daubercies, L. Gloria da Silva, Amélie Rollin, and Eldaire Terrise.

Then it (re)commences. The second chapter brings together works by Sarah Bazire, Cristina Chapier Poumailloux, Lorenzo Partenza, and Lorette Pouillon, evoking a beginning marked by an inventory taken before departure. Figures transcend the page, dancing on the wall; another lies face down, alone and full of hesitation; a story takes shape on a wall that is coming apart, a heart repairs itself. In the corner, a moving box spills out its packing peanuts. Commencer.

Je de jeux et jeux de je. Contemplating the first seconds after a form of rupture, the artists brought together in this chapter each have their own way of coping with the tremors of the final moments. Slowly, fragments slip and the past thickens; many things will no longer be the same as before.

In one corner of the room, Lorette Pouillon presents Steeve, frozen in a moment of silent realization, reaching out to us timidly through the unfurling of a paper ribbon carrying fragments of inner drama. Further on, we find him again — this time shrunken, miniature — in a play of scale tinged with self-mockery, reminding us that sometimes we need to step aside to gain a new perspective. Watery eyes watch over this scene, surrounded by the phrase “très triste” [very sad] which, when repeated in a loop, drifts into traitrise [betrayal] before being detached from its meaning. These sculptures, once part of the installation Flaque commune [common puddle], set in motion a shared emotional landscape, where moments of personal anxiety and stress intertwine and, with gentleness and distance, reveal that everyone, in their own way, passes through these inner torments.

On the other side, a fragment of wall breaks free from the rest of the room, allowing us to observe a story through all its layers. A shared feeling of solitude runs through Steeve and Lorenzo Partenza’s work Sedia Giulianova, which invites contemplation of fragments, erosion, and the multiple layers of a single story. An initial arrangement multiplies. Plaster binds the body of the sculpture to the drawing it carries, as it is both the support and the base of the sketched chair. A fading landscape insinuates this seat, made from an assemblage of objects endowed with sculptural qualities. Through his journeys — notably to Giulianova in Italy for the piece shown here — the artist develops a practice that questions how to archive his sensitivity to construction materials and the places he photographs, in order to carry them elsewhere.

Cristina Chapier Poumailloux transforms everyday manufactured objects into slightly strange forms, revealing their ephemeral nature. While some artists turn to the readymade, her work goes beyond simple appropriation: she deliberately weakens already precarious materials, in a kind of alchemy of fragility that celebrates vulnerability and flirts with the absurd. For Pas de Saint Valentin cette année [No Valentine’s Day This Year], she casts a heart-shaped balloon — destined to deflate — in paraffin, a material bound to melt. An ambiguity arises: the heart, emptied of its substance, rests on blue foam to preserve it, imposing in its delicacy, while a copper arrow placed beside it suggests a missed shot. Further on, inside a moving box, packing supports once made of polystyrene and meant to protect are reproduced in plaster and become the box’s delicate contents, revealing a paradox between heavy and light, delicate and utilitarian.

The moving box brings us back to our title: Commencer (par un courant d’air) [To commence (with a draft of air)], because it is precisely movement, the passage through malaise, sadness, solitude, and negative feelings in general, that makes it possible to move beyond: toward repair, by following a current of air that allows us to breathe, reassures us, and carries us further.

To fight this solitude, it is sometimes necessary to surround oneself. Here, the members of a close-knit family float on the walls, waiting for a trace of pain to be healed. In Faire famille rebelle by Sarah Bazire, the figures seem to have detached themselves from their original support to populate the wall, now turned into a page. They look at us, facing us, at our height. In opposition to the nuclear family, Sarah raises the question of how to form family differently, how to reclaim our public spaces, and above all, how to (re)build ourselves through our friends — our chosen family. Presented around Steeve, a solitary chair on a fragment of wall, a fragile heart, and an equally vulnerable box, these figures offer a renewed perspective on the works on display: if they whisper sadness, they are also crossed by a lightness, hinting that…